The ThunderCats
by frankannestein
Summary: Volume 3 of the Cat's Cradle Trilogy. The struggle for the Power Stones continues. Mumm-Ra has one, the ThunderCats two. A single Stone remains. It could be anywhere in the parts of Third Earth the cats have yet to explore. Meanwhile, Lion-O and Felline struggle to heal their broken hearts.
1. Picking Up the Pieces, part one

_**ThunderCats in its entirety © Warner Bros.**_

* * *

Berbils worked around the clock.

Felline opened her glacier-blue eyes to what should have been a pre-dawn hush, but the same industrial sounds met her large, feline ears to which she had fallen asleep: clicks, scrapes, bangs, the whirring of servos, the screeches of ratchets, the hisses of blowtorches, and the pounding of the fabrication presses. With the help of their little friends, Avista City should be sky-worthy again in less than a week.

Felline groaned. Less than a week in the company of birds was far too long, in her opinion.

As soon as she pushed out of the tent she shared with Cheetara and the twins, a cub-sized, sable-furred berbil rolled up to her.

"Ro-Cat Felline is online?" it queried in its emotionless, tinned voice.

"Yes, Ro-Bear Bill, I'm awake," she said through a stretch. She tried to rub some life back into her rump, and then she winced. To show solidarity with their largely homeless bird neighbors, the cats had voted to stay in the clumsy tent city that had sprung up in Avista's shadow rather than in the comfort of the _Feliner,_ and she was regretting the decision. She yawned. "Sort of. What's on the agenda for the day?"

Behind them, Cheetara emerged, gorgeous and golden in the rising sun. Yawning, WilyKit and WilyKat stepped out of the tent flap, and then fell limply at her feet, sprawling in the beaten dirt. Kat promptly began to snore.

Bill's shiny onyx eyes didn't blink, but his blue-lit mouth did when he spoke. "Repairs to infrastructure ongoing. Scrap needs sorting and quality check. Ventilation and hydroponic systems offline; food stores nonexistent. Assistance requested in recalibrating and testing new thundrilium thrusters."

"I can join the thundrilium team today," Cheetara offered, which was a good bet that was where her boyfriend, Tygra, would be. She and Felline nodded at each other, and then the cleric disappeared in a streak of yellow as bright as the sun.

Not bothering to open their eyes, the twins raised their hands in unison.

"We can help gather food," Kit said without enthusiasm or lifting her head.

"Bugs and seeds and more bugs, yum." Kat yawned.

Both kittens dragged themselves to their feet.

Felline stopped them with a hand on each of their heads. The birds, perhaps understandably, had never set surplus foodstuffs aside in storage. Their technology had eliminated the concept of growing and harvesting seasons, and their protein of choice didn't require rearing of any kind; until now, food had been readily available at all times. The cats weren't getting very far in teaching them to work with nature instead of against it. "Try not to get in any fights today, okay?"

"We'll try, Felline," WilyKit said tonelessly, her golden eyes downcast.

"It's not our fault," WilyKat said. His narrowed eyes met Felline's with a mixture of defiance and a plea for understanding. "They hate us, Felline."

"They won't help themselves," Kit said. Her voice wobbled. "They have wings but they won't fly. They have legs but they won't leave Avista. They'd starve without us, but they don't thank us."

Kat put an arm protectively around his sister. "They throw things."

"They call us names."

"We saved them, but they _hate_ us."

"It's because we threatened them first," Felline said. She crouched, smoothing WilyKat's brown and white mane, a stray tear from WilyKit's fawn-furred cheek. They were shooting up like day astrids, thinner and more wiry than ever; soon, Kat would be as tall as she was, which wasn't saying much. Still, they were just kittens, and didn't deserve such treatment. They had been decidedly against Pumyra's threats on Avista from the start. "We tried to steal from them. We almost got their entire population killed. We hurt many of them. We destroyed their homes. They're scared, and they're angry, and their leader has abandoned them. They don't understand Third Earth, and they don't want to be here. We can't force them to stay. It's our job to get them safely into the air. We owe it to them."

She studied their small, woebegone faces, and then repressed a sigh with difficulty. "I'll talk to Lion-O. Maybe he can say something to Prefect Horus." _Again._

Kat's mouth puckered. He pulled away. "I can't wait until they're gone."

He darted off, throwing his hoverboard ahead of him. He leaped onto it and zoomed into the sky.

"Kat, wait!" Kit cried. She followed him on her own board.

Felline watched them until their blue and pink contrails started to fade. Over the rise, repairs to the grounded city went on. Aburn and other elephants carried huge sheets and pipes of metal or glass on their shoulders, cement tubes and wire bundles clamped under their arms, odds and ends hanging in baskets from their trunks. Although the fishmen had returned to their oasis, unable to bear the dry air, and Faun to the Forest of Magi Oar, to let her spirit friends rest in Viragor's Pool, the dogs, under Dobo, had taken to patrolling the area around the city, alert for trouble on either side of their line.

Lion-O strode with barely leashed fury through the worksite, his blue armor and his red mane ablaze in the early morning sun. Horus, Vultaire's erstwhile second-in-command and stooge, strove not to appear frazzled as he broke into a shuffling trot to keep up with the young cat king, not-so-fresh silk robes flapping around his scaly pigeon legs.

Whatever had ruffled feathers this time, Felline knew Lion-O could take care of it. She squared her shoulders. "I guess that means I'm on cleanup today. Where do I report in?"

"This way," Bill said. He rolled into his furry wheel form and bounced ahead of her, squeaking like a toy.

Berbils worked around the clock, and since they hadn't tried to steal the Tech Stone, were impervious to the bad blood between cats and birds.

..::~*~::..

The campfire crackled. By its light, Felline removed the under-panel of WilyKat's blue and silver hoverboard so she could examine its inner workings. She separated wires with a claw, frowning, while a curl fell into her eye.

"Why don't you have the berbils look at that?" Lion-O asked from somewhere over her head.

"I don't want to distract them from their tasks," Felline mumbled, still frowning. Kat had said the propulsion system seemed to be hiccupping. Should be an easy enough fix, bent pins and a loose wire, probably, preventing the thundrilium crystal from powering the system consistently.

"Yeah," Lion-O said. He sat next to her, but hesitantly, as though he expected her to yell at him. When she didn't, he sagged in the firelight. He rubbed a hand over his tired face. "The sooner we get the birds back in the air, the sooner we can get out of here."

"That does seem to be the popular opinion," she said, a smile overtaking the frown of concentration. The stress of carrying the extra weight of the fishman who hadn't wanted to ride in the Forever Bag had probably caused the disconnect in the first place. The loose wire popped back in with a satisfying click and she sat up, happy with how the board came to life in her hands, humming.

Lion-O, however, did not smile back.

She glanced at him. Their immense workload demanded long hours, and without the means to adequately feed so many, dinner was something of an option for the cats. For the moment, she and Lion-O were alone.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Lion-O didn't respond at first. He rested his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers, and studied them by the firelight. He brushed a scar that stretched across the first three knuckles of his left hand with his right thumb. The fur lay the wrong way, just as it had across his father's nose. He sighed and looked up, over the snapping fire, into the darkness of the sandy plain that supported the low mountains. Avista cast cold white light into the sky through its windows and glass bubbles, washing out the softer light of the stars.

Everything about Lion-O's expression screamed of unhappiness.

"I keep thinking it has to be a dream," he said at last. He dropped his gaze to his hands again. "A bad dream that has lasted nearly a year."

Felline set Kat's hoverboard aside so that it could put itself to sleep until its owner wanted it. "Lion-O . . ."

A blue eye slid toward her, a darker and more complicated blue than hers. "My birthday is tomorrow."

"Is it?" she asked, surprised. She had lost track of time again. Easy to do when on the run from an evil sorcerer. "Wow. Eighteen. It's about time you caught up."

He didn't quite manage a laugh, though his smile made a brief appearance. "She told me she loved me."

Felline didn't have to ask who. _My friend,_ she thought, struggling to breathe against the pain. _She was never my friend._ "She did."

"Huh?" Lion-O looked at her with eyes that reminded her of WilyKat's, just that morning. Hard with defiance and brittle with a desperate plea for understanding.

"She did love you. As much as she could," Felline said. "But she had already died, Lion-O, before we ever met her. Pumyra wasn't in there anymore. Mumm-Ra's magic twisted her soul. It put her in thrall to him and the Ancient Spirits. That you touched her heart at all, well . . . that's why she was always so conflicted. Her betrayal isn't your fault."

He shifted next to her, his unhappiness palpable, disgust drawing his brows together. "She kissed that . . . _Thing._ She kissed me, and he called her Beloved, and I can't – _rahwr!"_

Lion-O jumped to his feet and started pacing, hands buried in his red mane. His eyes were wild now, blinded with pain, with grief, with confusion, with anger. "She had a choice between me and him and she chose him! He's _evil._ I loved her. Why am I always such a fool?"

"I loved her, too," Felline said. In spite of her best effort, tears welled up and threatened to spill over. "She made just as big a fool of me, and I helped her do it."

She waved a hand toward the downed city, the scent of bird that they couldn't escape thickening the noisy air. Pumyra had played them both, and there was no going back.

Lion-O surveyed the night, his honey-and-cream face carved from frosted marble in the unnatural light of the city. "This is all Mumm-Ra's fault," he said. His hands clenched. "And we are going to make him pay."

* * *

_**A/N: **Good morning, Dear Readers, and happy Saturday!_

_Welcome to the third and final installment of the Cat's Cradle Trilogy. Here, we will see the ThunderCats through the Second Season that Never Was, told by yours truly. It's an ambitious project, always has been, and I'm terrified of it, lol. I can only dream that you guys will enjoy this and stick with me to the end._

_Oh! As an aside, the fireside scene was the very first one I wrote in these books, all those years ago before the series was canceled. Thought you might like to know. ;3 From here on out, we're all in brand-new territory._

_Please review! I hope to receive comments of all kinds - good, bad, and indifferent. I want to know what you think, and I am always open to constructive criticism. :3 Plus, I will return all reviews. Pinkie promise._

_Until next time,_

_Anne_


	2. Picking Up the Pieces, part two

If sleeping on the ground wasn't going to kill her, Felline mourned, then these interminable meetings might.

"I already told you. The Tech Stone is gone, so some things are going to have to change!"

Lion-O's temper burst out of him in a shout that made Felline, Dobo, and Councilhen Columba wince. They had begun using the circular chamber in Avista City, where the ThunderCats had once been invited to a completely unpalatable dinner, for privacy. While undamaged, it did not dampen acoustics well. The elephants' leader, Anet, was supposed to be in attendance, though he had forgotten again. It was Felline's turn to sit in as a royal advisor.

Dobo's lip curled over sharp fangs as he turned wicked yellow-brown eyes on Prefect Horus.

"Your days of waste are over, my feathered friend," the doberman said in his deep voice. "No more wishing on a Stone to have everything you ever wanted handed to you."

Horus rustled his wings. "That is not the correct procedure for usage of the Stone –"

"Not relevant, Prefect," Lion-O said, forestalling the pigeon's textbook explanation. "The. Stone. Is. Gone."

Horus shut his beak and returned to impersonating a sulky cub. He had picked Vultaire's chair at the head of the table, which was empty, this time, of a singing, clicking, squirming meal. He may have fallen into his exalted role – literally – but he was no more suited to his duties than the fishmen were to life in the mountains. Under the table, Felline straightened the hem of her wine-red tunic, smoothed the creases from her soft black pants, and waited for Horus to bring forth his people's concerns, their needs, what they were doing to help themselves. Which he didn't.

Columba caught Felline's eye, something that had been happening often lately. The councilhen's round, dove-pink face looked full to bursting with things she longed to say but didn't quite dare. Especially since Horus did not seem inclined to share even a fraction of the power he'd inherited from Vultaire.

"By the way," Dobo said, breaking into the uncomfortably stretched silence as though a thought had just occurred to him. It hadn't. Felline had heard his complaints getting louder for the last three days. He scooted his chair back and propped one ankle on the opposite knee. "Dumping refuse near my city is no longer permitted without paying the fee. The dogs will not support the birds' trash heap any longer."

"Your fees do not apply to us," Horus loftily said. "We were not aware of your . . . city."

"Exactly!" Dobo snapped. He dropped his foot, sat forward, and slapped both hands on the table. "A mile's difference, and you might have buried us under your waste!"

"Not now, Dobo," Lion-O growled. He had not been deaf these past few days, either.

"Has a better time presented itself, Lion-O?" Dobo growled right back. He sneered, pointed canine ears as sharp as knife edges. "These birds are parasites."

"We are enlightened!" Horus cried, showing emotion at last. His narrow yellow eyes reminded Felline of Vultaire, shouting the same words from the same chair. Behind him, the low, wooded mountains spread across the windows instead of a pristine sea of clouds, and a pigeon could never be as menacing as a vulture, but the similarity filled her with unease. "Our culture has risen above the petty need for money. We are not tied to your Third Earth or your laws or your _fees._ We shall continue to do as we please –"

"Not without the Stone, you won't," Lion-O interrupted. He glared at Dobo, warning him to keep quiet, then turned his glare on the birds. "You no longer have access to unlimited resources, Prefect. You will have to establish commercial lines so you can trade with the people down here from time to time. You must put new processes in place to reduce your waste and reuse the resources you have. Dobo is the perfect animal with whom to start. Perhaps you can reclaim some viable materials from Scrap City."

"I'll allow it. _If_ they pay the fees," Dobo said. He chuckled in the back of his long muzzle at the look on Horus's face.

Columba cooed softly, as though testing Dobo's reaction. When he did nothing more threatening than look at her, she innocently asked, "How can we pay fees with no money?"

_"Trade,_ I said." Lion-O ran a hand through his mane in aggravation. As a result, it stuck up in more pronounced spikes than usual.

Horus glared at him. "You also said we do not have unlimited resources. Trade what?"

"Your technology," Dobo said, a hard gleam apparent now in his yellow-brown eyes. "I will trade scrap and dumping rights for some of your tech to help my people."

"Absolutely out of the question!" Horus shouted, wings aquiver.

"Then you're on your own. Just like you've left us all these centuries." Dobo stretched until his long neck cracked. He stood, tall, lean, and dark. "I told you it was useless, Lion-O. You get points for trying, though."

He swaggered out of the circular room without a backward glance. They heard the doors whoosh open and closed.

Horus cooed grumpily in his throat. He said nothing else.

Felline and Lion-O looked at each other. Columba sagged in her chair, her eyes downcast. She seemed so troubled that Felline decided to speak up.

"There is one other possibility, Prefect," she said. "If trading with Dobo doesn't interest you, perhaps you could send an envoy to the bird colonies in the Cliffs of Silence. They may be more welcoming to your people than the dogs."

"I was not aware of any colonies," Horus said, monotone once more. He blinked his narrow eyes and then stood. "You will send this envoy."

"I'm sorry, but we will not," Lion-O said flatly. He stood, also. He and Horus were nearly the same height. "We can't hold your hand any longer. Mumm-Ra is still out there. We have a mission to complete."

Horus clicked his beak, and the sound reminded Felline of a mousetrap snapping shut. "A mission that brought you to us to be our downfall, and now that you lost what you came for, you will desert us."

"Yeah. That's right," Lion-O said in a rough, pained voice. "I've apologized enough. I wish you the best of luck, Prefect."

He looked at Felline, who followed him from the chamber.

She waited until they had exited the city into the hot, dusty, and noisy worksite to speak. "Unless Councilhen Columba takes charge, Horus is going to run that city right back into the ground. She is the only bird who hasn't shown us open antagonism. Cheetara says she's been trying to get her people to work with us, but too many of them cling to Horus because they cling to their belief that they deserve a life without work, and he isn't saying otherwise."

Lion-O stared up at the repaired spires, bubbles, and sails of the floating city, once such a wonder to them, now a mistake that they would never forget, and he sighed.

"Help her, will you?" he asked. "Just . . . get them pointed in the right direction."

"Of course." Felline bowed her head to her king and left him to the next problem awaiting his attention.

..::~*~::..

Steam wafting around her pale face, Cheetara tucked her spotted, dandelion-yellow hair behind a pointed ear. "I admit that I feel relieved," she said while she stirred a pot of cracked barley and pill bug soup. Then she looked up, sunset eyes apologetic.

"Why?" Tygra asked her. He lifted the pot and set it on a rickety camp table, ready to serve to the birds already flocking toward them under the noontime sun and moons. "You said it yourself. Pumyra was too feral to be queen."

"When did you say that?" Felline asked. She tugged at the knot in the scarf that covered her hair and ears.

Cheetara looked uncomfortable. "It doesn't matter," she said, covering her own head.

No, Felline supposed it didn't. Pumyra was gone, and she was never coming back.

Cheetara relented in the face of Felline's silence. "I shouldn't have said it in the first place, but all I meant was, she was the one Lion-O chose, and she was a lion," she said. "I couldn't deny him, even as a protector of the crown, when there are so few of us left. I honestly didn't think a better option would present itself."

"You mean he wouldn't have listened to you if you had said something, and would have married her on the spot just to spite you," Tygra said with a smirk.

Cheetara handed a bowl of soup to a bird who did not thank her. Her slight eyebrows twitched, fighting to pull together in a frown. "Yes, Tygra. That's why I'm relieved."

"That we won't have to bow to a psychopath? I agree."

"Don't call her that!" Cheetara accidentally slopped soup onto the table when she rounded on her boyfriend.

A rolled-up pill bug bounced onto the ground at a drake's webbed feet. He quacked without opening his beak, eyeing the birds in line behind him, obviously wondering if he could pick it up and eat it without anyone noticing. His hen shoved him out of the way and kicked dirt over the bug. Their ducklings cheeped in disappointment.

Cheetara ignored them. "She was one of us, Tygra. What happened to her wasn't her fault. It was ours."

"How do you figure that?" he exploded. "We had no idea anyone was still alive after the Fall of Thundera. We searched the city for a whole day, or don't you remember that part? She was a spy. And my poor, attention-deprived little brother fooled himself into thinking he was in love with the first woman who would give him the time of day!"

"It's not for you to decide what he felt!"

"Come on, Cheetara, he didn't exactly make a secret of it – the little martyr blamed me for most of his problems, remember?"

"I'm starved," Panthro announced, oblivious to the fact that he had interrupted what might have turned into a fight with his big, spiky presence. "What's for lunch?"

He peered over Felline's head into the pot and then drew back, making a sound that might have been, _"Oh."_ Or maybe it was, _"Eurgh."_

"Keep your hair on, big guy. Our lunch is over by the tents. Kit and Kat might eat it all before we get there, though. Bone stew," Tygra told him, amused. He studied Cheetara's expression, then settled a big, white-fingered hand in the curve of her waist and pulled her close. "I'll see you there," he whispered into her hair.

Cheetara, the dripping ladle in one hand and a bowl in the other, bestowed a glowing look on him. She tilted her face up, glossy coral lips ready. Tygra bent to kiss her.

"I don't know what's making me sicker," Panthro rumbled in disgust. He pointed a thick finger at the pot. "That." He pointed the finger at Tygra. "Or that."

Grinning, Tygra batted the finger away. "Jealous, old man?"

"Ha! Hardly!"

Cheetara and Felline laughed. Then a finch, who had been waiting with increasing impatience, made an irritated chirruping noise and the laughter died. The line of hungry, ungrateful birds seemed to stretch on forever. Cheetara and Felline reached for more bowls.

"Less than a week," Felline said through a sigh.

"Less than that," Tygra said in a strangled voice. "Look!"

Startled, she followed his gaze. A bowl slipped out of her unresponsive hands and shattered against the rocky ground. Birds squawked at the sound.

A pack of dogs hurtled toward them, barking and howling in warning, though the horizon seemed clear. Felline saw nothing that would cause such panic. The city's proximity alarms were quiet. Everyone else, even the tireless berbils, was on break for lunch.

"What's got them all worked up?" Panthro wondered. His mismatched eyes narrowed when flocks of avians lifted from the distant trees, echoing the dogs' warning.

Felline fitted her goggles to her eyes and they booted up with the familiar beep and red flash. Through the filter, they reported a very different scene. The dogs had split off, beginning a herding pattern that would shunt the birds of Avista toward the city and safety. Behind them, sprinting in slow motion, a row of battle mechs topped the rise and closed the distance. Like water in a fountain, a spray of hovercraft appeared over the mechs, and behind them, waves of zipcraft zoomed into the supersonic with dull flashes of white.

Felline could hear the machines now, roaring over the ground, ripping the air, booming as they passed through the sound barrier. She squinted, puzzled by the way her goggles kept blinking and fizzing, seeming unable to render the scene fully. Then the truth hit her.

"They've got some sort of invisibility capability!" she gasped.

"Who?" Cheetara cried. Though she couldn't see the enemy, she whirled Viragor's staff into its full length. Tygra produced Javan's whip from a pocket of his fatigues, and Panthro the red and blue nunchaku from his belt.

"The lizard army." Felline looked at her friends. "We need to warn Lion-O."

* * *

_**A/N: **Next up: "Happy Birthday, Lion-O!" Or, "Vultaire's Revenge." I couldn't decide._

_Reviewer Thanks! Oh, I've missed doing these! :3 **KelseyAlicia**, **Atea1793**, **St4r Hunter**, **pantherscastle**, **SAK-96**, **Lionessa**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Champion of Justice**, **xluckineko1990x**, and __**LunaStone115**._ _You guys are the BEST on the internet! I'm so lucky to have you!_

_Love,_

_Anne_


	3. Vultaire's Revenge, part one

"What am I looking at here?" Lion-O asked wearily. No matter how deliberately he blinked his eyes, he couldn't force them to make sense of a blueprint that should have made sense.

"Environmental control system," Ro-Bear Bethany told him, her pink cheeks and pink ear flower as fresh as the day he'd met her.

A far cry from how he felt, with eyelids that weighed ten pounds each. If he couldn't get his brain to shut up and let him sleep one of these nights, he was going to drop dead. There were just so many _problems_ . . .

Bethany pointed with a green-furred paw, her blunt metal claw tapping the blueprint. "Environmental control should be improved by a supplementary air supply system due to the higher altitudes at which Prefect Horus wishes to fly Avista City, and the slightly higher bubble pod pressure resulting."

Lion-O's tired brain chugged, processing what he'd heard. "He wants to take the city _higher?"_

"Yes," Bethany buzzed.

"Why?" he asked stupidly. Apparently, nothing was going to make sense today.

"It is, perhaps, a disappointment to have our friends fly so far out of our reach," Anet said, and then, at Lion-O's snort, he smiled and held up a gray-nailed finger, "but not something at which we should wonder. Our feathery friends expound enlightenment. I can think of no better environment than a city in the clouds for this actualization. True enlightenment comes through harmony, which means achieving self-improvement without hurting others and contributing to the happiness of many."

"Yeah, you're right. Their leaving will contribute to the happiness of many," Lion-O said into his fist. He grinned up at the large, often bewildered elephant leader, whose fan-like ears waved off buzzing insects in the heat.

Anet smiled happily back at him.

"So what's the problem, Bethany?" Lion-O asked, for the little berbil had tugged on his baggy trouser leg.

"Conditions not optimal for work," she said, blue-lit mouth blinking with each canned word. Her head swiveled toward the east. "We are under attack."

_"What?"_

The missiles appeared out of nowhere, dropping a few feet before their thrusters kicked on and sent them screaming into the ramshackle tent city. Dogs, hardened by years in The Pit, rushed at the suddenly heaving mass of animals, snapping sharp teeth. Tents crumpled, run down and trampled by panicked feet, which also kicked over folding tables, beds, and chairs to trip those following. The dogs ran after the fleeing birds, barking.

Too late, Lion-O realized his mistake. He had not put any extra defenses in place because he had focused on repairing the flying city as quickly as possible. He had assumed that Mumm-Ra would sit at home, content to play with his new Stone, for longer. He had relied on the birds' technology to combat Mumm-Ra's. His wishful thinking had left everyone wide open to attack. Again.

"Dobo!" he bellowed. He pulled the Sword of Omens from the Gauntlet, extending the gleaming blade in the same movement. "Where are you?"

"Here." The tall doberman materialized out of a cloud of dust, shaking his head as if to rid his ears of water. Ocher dirt coated his sleek fur. He held his scimitar in one hand, and he, too, looked to the east. "What do you make of this?" He coughed. "There's nothing there!"

"Mumm-Ra," Lion-O growled. The Sword keened.

Dobo looked at the empty, peaceful horizon and smirked. "With what army?"

Anet studied the sandy plain, and then perked up his ears and smiled. "That one," he volunteered. He pointed with his bough-sized walking stick.

The air shimmered and warped like giant, inflating soap bubbles. When they popped, zipcraft appeared and shot by overhead, readying their missiles for another attack. In the fore, a sky cutter larger than the others lead the charge. Its graceful wings sliced the air like broken glass. Its nose mimicked the hooked beak of a scavenger. Its hyper-shiny, flawless black paint blinded them when the sunlight slid over it. Lion-O knew exactly who was piloting that craft.

Meanwhile, bursting through the weird soap-bubble effect, hovercraft deck cannons fired upon the fleeing birds, while warmechs formed a perimeter to prevent escape. Lion-O flinched under the sudden stab of memory, of his father's city imploding from the inside out. Of the clerics, crushed between an army and Thundera's high white wall. Of Mumm-Ra, posing as Panthro, murdering his father.

His hand tightened on the Sword's grip, and he looked down at it, the elegant silver crossguard, the bloodred Eye of Thundera. He had been entrusted with the lives contained within the Sword, to protect the lives of Third Earth. He couldn't let anyone else die.

The second wave of missiles descended and exploded, throwing the three animal leaders to the ground. The zipcraft seemed intent on driving the birds away from Avista, into the path of the slower, oncoming hovercraft.

Lion-O lay full-length in the dirt. While small rocks and debris rained down on him, he spoke quickly. "You have to call your men back, Dobo. Rally the ravenmen. The birds are used to the sight of them. They will help you get everyone back inside the city."

"On it. But I want blood, Lion-O," Dobo said darkly.

"You'll have it," Lion-O promised him.

They exchanged a determined glance, acknowledging that this alliance, formed and held until repairs to the flying city were complete, was now over, but that the dogs and the cats would continue to work together going forward.

In unison, they pushed themselves to their feet. Dobo stuck his fingers between his teeth and whistled once, the sharp, long sound causing the canine gladiators to snap to attention. He bounded off, long legs eating up the distance until the rising dust clouds obscured him.

"Anet!" Lion-O shouted next.

"I am all right, Lion-O," the elephant assured him. His small eyes, couched in incredibly wrinkled skin, tracked the perfect flying V of the zipcraft with a calculating expression. "The elephants are ready to defend our friends once more."

"Good." Lion-O glanced around, sizing up the situation. "We'll need a route for our people to withdraw. See what you can do about those mechs."

"Gladly." Anet strode off, his orange robes easily visible in the chaos, brandishing his walking stick. Aburn met him after a few strides, the younger elephant's slightly smoother face murderous. One by one, their brothers joined them, wielding building materials like weapons, gathering speed, until they intersected the line of mechs with a crash that shook the ground. Then the elephants were through, swinging around for another charge, ivory tusks and massive fists lifting in challenge.

WilyKit, as Lion-O had counted on, was never far from her usually peaceable friends. She and her brother surfed low through the melee on their boards, dropping handheld artillery onto the hovercraft from above, skillfully dodging the shots fired up at them. Glittery, multi-colored explosions engulfed the scene. Lion-O pitied the animals caught within an acre of the twins' patented Stinky Sticky Bombs.

Three problems taken care of. The Sword sang in his hand, and he turned. Felline and Ro-Bear Bob had arrived. They helped a dazed Bethany onto her short legs.

"Invisibility shields. New radio spectrum allocation. Stealth dampeners. They're making good use of the Tech Stone," Felline said angrily. She grimaced as more explosions took out a whole section of the city's understructure, her ears folded flat to her pinned-up hair. Her goggles dangled from around her neck. "They're targeting the thundrilium thrusters. Panthro and Tygra have gone to protect them."

"Good. They've put too much work into those systems to let the lizards destroy them now," Lion-O said. "Which means we need to get the city into the air."

"Can you do it?" Felline asked her little friends.

"Affirmative, Ro-Cat Felline," the two berbils chorused. They rolled up, preparing to dash through the chaos.

"Ah-ah-ah, not so _fast,_ bears," a high voice giggled.

An energy beam shot between the two cats, just missing Bob and sending him soaring into the air. Bethany changed direction on a pin and unfolded to catch him. Immediately, the two berbils rolled up again and fled, squeaking with each bounce.

"Leave them alone, Kaynar!" Felline shrieked, surprising Lion-O. She whipped her gunblade from its thigh holster and fired back.

"Whoopsie!" the jackalman simpered. He turned his snake-headed hovercraft to that her shots ricocheted off the underside. "Temper, temper, little kitty. Don't worry, I'll play with you, too."

He licked his chops. Undaunted, Felline hissed at him, her long, thick tail lashing.

Lion-O caught a whiff of sweat and carrion behind him and brought the Sword up just in time to block Addicus's spiked mace before it caved in his skull.

"Time for some payback," the white-maned monkey said. He shoved his mace against the Sword so that Lion-O strained not to give ground. "You beat us good in the sky. Now it's time to beat you."

"And have a little snack," Kaynar added. His tasseled ears flicked playfully. "I'm feeling peckish."

Addicus grinned, flat pink lips peeling away from teeth like blocks. "I ate six birds before they caught me and threw me off the Cliffs of Silence," he bragged, his foul breath wafting into Lion-O's face, his small eyes disconcertingly focused. "I like birds, but I've never tried a cat. Wonder what you taste like."

"Chicken," Kaynar told him, and both generals went off in gales of laughter, one high and screechy, the other low and guttural.

"Just try it!" Cheetara shouted. She streaked onto the scene in a blur of sun-yellow. Too fast to see, she whacked Addicus under his chin, snapping his head back and freeing Lion-O, and then leaped aboard the hovercraft and walloped Kaynar in the kneecaps. She skidded to a stop next to Felline, tall and slender and strong. Her bo staff whistled menacingly through the air.

Hopping on one foot, the jackalman squealed when he accidentally slipped off the hovercraft. He landed with an audible grunt in the dirt. A second passed.

His voice floated weakly from the rising dust cloud. ". . . Ow."

Addicus picked himself up, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Then he was up and charging. Cheetara blurred away, but Felline wasn't quick enough. One huge, pink hand closed around her leg, engulfing it from ankle to mid-thigh. Addicus lifted her high and whipped her back down, slamming her into the ground. Her gunblade flew one way, the pieces of her goggles another. When the monkey straightened to his full height with a satisfied smirk, she lay in a little crater, her eyes closed, her shell-pink lips parted between the black tear lines that bracketed her mouth.

"Felline!" Lion-O called.

She didn't react. She lay so still, so small, that he couldn't tell if she was breathing.

He started toward her, but Kaynar got in his way.

"Aw, is that one your main squeeze now?" Kaynar whirled his spear around. A tassel danced at the end, beneath the blade. It distracted Lion-O enough that he didn't block it in time, and the spear shaft punched him in the side. Kaynar smoothed his goatee, studying Lion-O's expression, and then he gave a delighted little _hee! _that made his broad shoulders shake. "Pumyra's not going to like that," he said with relish.

Lion-O's fist smashed into Kaynar's nose.

Cheetara jumped between Felline and Addicus. She parried Addicus's mace with her staff, and then they commenced trading blows with furious speed. In a few seconds, Cheetara had the mutant monkey spinning in angry circles, boulderlike muscles bunching, arms windmilling, as he tried to land a solid hit and fend off her quicker strikes in turn.

"Stay _still!"_ Addicus roared. His mace impacted the ground like a pile driver.

"Only if you stay down!" Cheetara cracked the staff into his round pink ear, knocking his horned helmet askew, half blinding him and disrupting his equilibrium. She streaked away before his fist closed on her. He dropped to one knee, obviously trying to keep the world in focus.

The jackalman stumbled back, blood flying between the fingers he pressed to his short muzzle. Lion-O had heard the phrase "seeing red" before, could remember his father's legendary lion's temper, but now he _knew_ what it meant. It was more than seeing the blood. It was more than seeing the jackalman's red-orange fur. It was pure, red rage. It washed across his vision and coated his tongue with the tang of metal.

Lion-O tried to breathe through the agonizing fire that lit up his insides at the mention of Pumyra. His awareness shrank until he could no longer hear the pandemonium erupting all around him. Dobo and the dogs barking and yelping, Anet and the elephants trumpeting, the tantalizing notes of Kit's flupe and the whizz of WilyKat's flink, the cries of frightened birds, even the fight between Cheetara and Addicus – he couldn't spare a thought for any of them. The Sword sang to his fury as he whipped it in front of Kaynar's face. He struck again, keeping the taller animal off balance until he managed to land a kick in Kaynar's middle that sent him over backward. Kaynar lost his hold on his spear and Lion-O jumped to take advantage. He put his foot on his foe's furry chest, preventing him from getting back up.

"I don't have time to play with you," he rasped. He thrust the Sword point-first into the ground and leaned in close. "Why are you here, Kaynar?"

Kaynar watched a few of his fiery orange hairs float on the dusty air, severed by the Sword, whose edge quivered less than an inch from his cheek. His manic grin flashed on and then off again like a blowing fuse.

"We're here to kill you," he said clearly and with surprising candor. "Mumm-Ra wants you dead."

"Tell me something I don't know," Lion-O muttered. He punched the jackalman again. As Kaynar chuckled through the dirty-nailed hand he pressed over his face, Lion-O shouted, "You're a distraction! What's the real reason?"

"Ooo! Ooo!" Addicus, who was lying on his stomach while Cheetara produced a coil of fiber optic cable and rapidly tied his limbs together, spat out a mouthful of dirt and glared balefully at his partner. "Don't tell him, Kaynar."

_"Tell?"_ Kaynar snickered into his palm. "Why on Third Earth would I tell? Is it a secret?"

"I watch you," Addicus grunted. He struggled, but Cheetara had trussed his arms and legs too tightly. "You don't like the newcomers."

Kaynar dropped his hand and rolled his red-and-yellow eyes. "No, pudding-brain, I don't like the newcomers," he sneered. He licked the blood from his goatee and grinned up at Lion-O. "We've been _replaced._ Demoted. Reduced to sideshow _freaks._ We're out of favor, see, for failing to retrieve the War Stone."

Lion-O backed off, eyeing Mumm-Ra's giggling general while Cheetara bound him, too. "Replaced, huh? You should choose your allies more carefully."

Kaynar pretended to vomit, so convincingly that Cheetara disappeared and reappeared at Lion-O's side, her pretty face screwed up in disgust.

"Spare me," the jackalman said belligerently, and then he laughed.

He was still laughing when the hovercraft, a stick propped against the yoke, carried him and Addicus away from Avista City.

* * *

_**A/N: **In spite of some super frustrating internet issues, I present you the next update! I really, really love writing Kaynar and Addicus. I loved their new versions so much. I'm doing my best, dear readers, and I hope you like it!_

_Reviewer Thanks! **Lionessa**, **KelseyAlicia**, **St4r Hunter**, **SAK-96**, **Atea1793**, and **LunaStone115**. Each review is a little bit of brightness in my day, and I LOVE them! Thank you!_

_Forever yours,_

_Anne_


	4. Vultaire's Revenge, part two

"Lion-O!" Cheetara called. "Felline's not breathing!"

His stomach dropped into his toes. He ran over to his friends, dread drying out his mouth. "Is she –?"

"No, but I have to act fast," Cheetara said tensely. "Tilt her head back and make sure there are no obstructions in her throat."

When he didn't immediately obey, Cheetara closed cold, hard fingers on his wrist. Her sunset-colored eyes were laser-beam sharp. _"Now,_ Lion-O."

Why was he hesitating? He nodded, and the steely fingers disappeared. He awkwardly lifted Felline's head over his folded legs and opened her mouth. She did not resist. She was warm but completely limp, unconscious but not asleep. There was no life in her at all.

Meanwhile, Cheetara held Viragor's staff horizontally over Felline's body, her eyes closed in concentration. The staff began to glow a soft green, reminiscent of fungal phosphorescence. The glow spread up her arms.

She opened her eyes. They glinted green, too. Slowly, she pressed one glowing hand against Felline's chest, and then she pressed harder. The green glow invaded Felline's body, rippling like a pool of water under Cheetara's palm. The staff made an alarming cracking noise, like a branch breaking.

"Breathe, Felline," Cheetara said, her gaze locked on Felline's chest – not as if she saw it, but as if she saw _through_ it to a still and cooling heart. "Breathe!"

She worked for a few seconds over their lifeless friend, pressing the green glow deeper until, with a loud snap, a sliver of the staff cracked away from the whole.

Felline jumped. Her eyes opened, more cub-like and frightened than ever. After enough time to make Lion-O, who had begun holding his breath, begin to wish for air, she gasped. Panic flooded her white face. Then she started coughing.

"It'll be all right. Just breathe," Cheetara said, sounding breathless herself. She lowered the cracked staff, helped Felline sit up from Lion-O's lap, and rubbed her back with a perfectly normal hand.

"Thanks," Felline managed to say. She held her head in her hands, burying her face in her knees. Her voice, when she spoke, was muffled. "Now I know how it feels to get run over by the ThunderTank."

Startling Lion-O, the sliver of staff that had fallen suddenly gave a wiggle. Wormlike, it squirmed for a moment over the rocky ground, and then tiny, hair-like fibers sprouted from one end. These sought the cool darkness of the soil, turning the sliver upright. As Lion-O watched, a few tender green leaves unfurled from the tip. It had become a seedling. If it survived, then a piece of Viragor's magic would live on, far from the Forest of Magi Oar.

"Where did you learn magic like that?" he asked Cheetara wonderingly. He hoped her staff would heal itself as well, in time.

She grinned. "Here and there. A little from Faun, a bit from the elephants, some from the fishmen. There is wisdom in all ways. All ways are wise."

"Right." Lion-O wasn't quite sure what she meant, but he did know one thing: Cheetara was still Jaga's best student.

This thought killed his relief at Felline's recovery. Cheetara was the last cleric. He was the last king. So many animals had sacrificed everything they had to get them to this point. Felline had almost joined their number.

No more.

Lion-O stood. "You two get to the _Feliner_ and prepare for takeoff,_"_ he said.

He expected Felline to object, but she seemed groggy and sick, her ears wilted, her arms wrapped around her chest as though she needed to hold her ribs together.

"Where are you going?" Cheetara asked.

"To put a stop to this."

"How?"

"Pumyra. She's here. Kaynar was supposed to keep me busy, keep me away from her. If I can stop her, then I stop the battle."

Cheetara's mouth popped open. "You think that's what Kaynar meant? Wait! Lion-O –!"

He was already running, his heartbeat loud in his ears. Lizards reared out of the obscuring dust clouds, thick-haunched, thin-shouldered, and toting enormous energy rifles equipped with bayonets long enough to pierce an elephant's leathery skin. Their swamp-colored hides, mottled blue and gray and green and brown, camouflaged them until they were underfoot, so he concentrated on the telltale winking of their red-lensed goggles or the accidental gleam of sunlight on their helmets. Not so long ago, he had wasted several weeks trying to save a people he had once seen as pathetic, misunderstood victims in need of a champion. Instead of killing those he caught, he had set them free and given them a chance to return home. The fact that they were here, still fighting, still doing Mumm-Ra's bidding – his pity burned away in the heat of battle and he struck them ruthlessly down. Left and right the Sword arced, smashing apart rifles, releasing cold reptilian blood in sprays that dampened the dust. Several times, he called forth the blue lightning that made his fur crackle and flung it off the Sword's blade at the zipcraft that tracked him through the chaos, blowing them out of the sky. He carved a path through the worst destruction as though a force had leashed him and dragged him forward.

To her.

Mumm-Ra's generosity toward his newest general, his beloved pet, shone under her feet, which were wrapped in the kind of supple leather footwear the cats preferred. The oversized, snake-headed hovercraft bore her leisurely through the battle, its lizard crew manning the deck cannons, mowing down the resistance fighters. On Avista's doorstep, ravenmen and dogs and elephants fell to the overpowered cannons' efficiency. Tygra stood with them, his blue whip seeking soft lizard throats to wrap around, weapons to steal from thin fingers, unwary legs or tails to pluck from underneath.

Behind Tygra, the city rumbled. With agonizing slowness, like a stone falling upward through tar, Avista lifted from the ground. It shed rocks and dirt from its smooth metal skin, shuddering as it fought to break free of Third Earth and reclaim its place in the sky. The fleeing stragglers spread their wings at last, crying out as they chased the city into the air, begging not to be left behind.

Pumyra stood at the hovercraft's prow, an electric spear propped upright in one hand, the other hand fisted against a shapely hip. Her golden wrist bow gleamed. The wind combed through her ginger ponytail. The fur-lined dress had been replaced with a suit of armor similar to Lion-O's, though the black metal swallowed the light, and the bloodred emblem of a double-headed snake blazed across her chest plate. She watched the city struggle to stabilize and pointed with her spear. As one, the deck cannons angled up, firing upon Avista repeatedly.

At her side, somehow dwarfed by her tall, slender, and imposing form, Slithe, leader of the lizards, stood impassively watching the slaughter. He crossed his freakishly long arms over his pale, flabby chest, his wedge-shaped mouth closed and unsmiling. He looked bored, his eyelids at half-mast, his tail barely moving to keep his balance. Not once did he look at the armored mountain lioness who had taken his place at the head of his people's armies.

Lion-O thought he had prepared himself, but when Pumyra turned her head and fixed heavy-lashed eyes on him, he felt as though she had punched a fist through his chest and wrapped claw-tipped fingers around his heart. Autumn-glossed lips spread in a grin as manic as Kaynar's, her face transported with feral pleasure. The phantom claws squeezed.

Zipcraft circled, firing at the thundrilium thrusters that groaned with all the force of a dragon's exhale. The thrusters shot tails of blue-white flame that stretched ten feet, fifty, one hundred. The remaining ravenmen, aboard their replenished sky cutters, dropped from the city's bays like vengeful wasps. While they turned upon the lizards still circling like vultures, the city gained momentum, rising faster now, an air bubble streaking for the surface.

They had done it. The city, though trailing black smoke, shrank with distance, flying free. It was going. Going. Gone.

Lion-O barely noticed. "Pumyra!"

"Lion-O," she said, her raspy voice hungry. She crouched, grasping the spear in both hands. It crackled and buzzed to life.

"Stop this now!" he said, his own voice raspy as he fought against the tide of emotions that battered his body from the inside.

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't take orders from you."

With a roar, she sprang.

In The Pit, Lion-O had refused to fight her because he had seen her, this beautiful, feral woman, as another victim in need of a champion. He knew better now.

"Thunder. _Thunder._ Thunder! ThunderCats, _ho!"_

Pumyra spun in mid-air so that the red beam that shot from the Eye of Thundera missed her by a handspan. She landed on her feet. Bent double, she charged at him on a curve, seeking his unguarded back. Lion-O held the beacon of the roaring cat head steady and flung out his Gauntleted left arm. He just needed to hold her off until help arrived.

The Spirit Stone flared and planted a vibrating pink shield between them. Pumyra checked her charge and threw up her crossed arms, but Lion-O's shield expanded. It pushed her back. She dug in her toes, her claws leaving long furrows in the dirt, and snarled her frustration at him.

From the side, laser blasts tore up the ground around Lion-O, forcing him to jump out of the way. The beacon blinked out. Pumyra punched the spirit shield, breaking it into pieces – but instead of resuming her attack, she whirled, bristling, upon her own hovercraft.

"I don't need help from you, _lizard,"_ she spat with withering venom.

Slithe blinked his reptilian eyes. He didn't seem perturbed in the least that the birds had slipped through their claws. "Mumm-Ra's ordersss," he said in a bored tone of voice. "We lizardss are to provide asssistance and backup for General Pumyra."

"I don't need a cubsitter!"

Slithe stared down at her with sunken yellow eyes, his body a hill of corpulence. "Mumm-Ra's ordersss," he repeated.

So furious she couldn't seem to talk, Pumyra hissed at him. Then, the hiss turning into a bloodcurdling screech, she pivoted on her heels, and she swung the electric spear at Lion-O. He blocked the strike, but she had already leaped back and armed the tiny wrist bow. He moved to summon the spirit shield, too slow. He had always been too slow for her.

A red nunchaku lashed out, quick as the stroke of a hummingbird's wing. Panthro stalked onto the field, knocking each of Pumyra's pellet-sized bullets out of the air. Broad chest scarred, harem trousers cinched around a thick waist, square-jawed face grim, he whipped his nunchaku around his shoulders in a lightning-fast display of reflexes and strength. His mismatched eyes, Lion-O noted, glowed with golden light, like polished shilligs catching the sun.

As he had commanded, the Sword of Omens had called its own champion.

Panthro didn't utter a single word. He blocked the last of Pumyra's bullets and then took a stance in front of Lion-O, the king's loyal bodyguard once more. If Slithe was a hill, then the gray panther was a mountain, a slab of muscle as hard as stone.

Pumyra, grinding her teeth, twisted the handle of her spear. The tip separated into a fork, its tines webbed with electricity. She charged.

Panthro's nunchaku parried her thrust. He wrapped the spear shaft in the chain and yanked, which carried Pumyra into his range. He grabbed her head with a big metal paw and threw her toward the ground.

She seized his wrist with both hands and swung her lower body up, both heels catching his jaw with a bone-rattling crunch.

Panthro reeled back, but, in thrall to the Sword, recovered faster than a blink. He released a flurry of hydraulic-fueled punches that Pumyra could not hope to block, not at close range. The spear broke in two. She tried to sweep his legs from under him but winced as her guarded shin bounced off his heavily-muscled calf, and then cried out when his fist crashed into her cheek.

She landed with a grunt. Retched out a mouthful of blood. Raised frightened eyes when Panthro's shadow blanketed her.

"Enough!" Lion-O burst out. If he had to watch more of this, he was going to explode.

Panthro stepped back. His eyes brightened like heated metal, and then returned to their normal warm brown and milky gray. His expression of stern disapproval did not vanish, however.

"I don't need your pity!" Pumyra cried. Red smeared her cheek when she scrubbed her forearm across her bleeding mouth.

"It's not pity!" Lion-O snarled in frustration. He had to get through to her, one last time, before Slithe and the lizards, inexplicably watching from the sidelines, doing nothing, decided to act. He stepped toward her, and she scrabbled backward. He felt like stamping his foot. Child king, Lord of Fools. "We are not your enemies, Pumyra!"

"Stay back!" Pumyra produced a dagger, as curvy as a snake, and she slashed at Lion-O with it.

* * *

_**A/N: **Hello, FanFiction! Hope you're all well, and thank you very much for waiting for this update. It was hard-fought on my part, let me tell you, lol. I think I rewrote it three separate times . . . _

_On a different note, I have some requests of you, my dearest Readers and Lurkers. I posted them in my profile, so if you haven't lately, please take the time for a little click and a quick read. *puppy eyes* Pretty please and thanks ever so much for your help! Especially with the scanned images part . . ._

_Reviewer Thanks! **Hestia28 **(hello, friend, good to hear from you! I think your request is a reasonable one, so I will definitely do my best!), **KelseyAlicia**, __**Atea1793**, **Lionessa**, **St4r Hunter**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Billamon**, **LunaStone115**, **The Night Whisperer**, and** FallingStar5027**. You all deserve cookies for being such great readers. Thank you!_

_~ Anne_


	5. Vultaire's Revenge, part three

The blade nicked his outstretched fingers, but Lion-O knocked it aside and pounced. Pumyra shrieked as his heavier body thudded into hers, sending them both sprawling. He pinned her wrists to the ground, trying to capture her gaze.

Pumyra thrashed under him, her eyes pinched shut, throwing her head from side to side.

"Pumyra!" Lion-O shouted over her shrieks and growls. "Pumyra, look at me!"

"No!" she howled. "I hate you! _I hate you!"_

"Lion-O!" Panthro's deep voice stabbed as sharp as iron splinters, but Lion-O ignored his warning.

Desperate, wildly hoping she wouldn't bite him, he covered Pumyra's mouth with his own.

She gave a muffled shout and her eyes opened wide. She tasted of blood and heat. After half a heartbeat, she relaxed, her resistance seeming to melt away. She kissed him back. Her eyes slid shut, thick lashes hiding amber depths, and it was like nothing had changed between them. Her kiss burned through his body, baring all of his nerve endings to the elements. His grip on her wrists loosened and her hands crept up his arms, caressing, loving. For a moment, he was lost.

Then her feet found his stomach and she launched him across the field.

Lion-O rolled in the dirt, small rocks scraping his bare arms. Panthro ran toward him, while behind the big cat, Pumyra propped herself up on her elbow.

She began to scream.

She screamed like someone had set her on fire. Panthro and Lion-O gaped as she curled up on herself, her hands pressed over her pointed ears. Lion-O thought he could see red staining her teeth, and his own throat ached. Her screams reverberated in his skull.

"Such a disgusting display," said Vultaire, his urbane tone amplified to drown out Pumyra's demented howling. "I hate to say 'I told you so,' because when I ruled Avista City, no one was gauche enough to disagree with me in the first place."

The sleek black sky cutter hovered over the scene, its mobile repulsors whipping the air into a hurricane swirl, clearing the immediate area of clogging dust. Lion-O felt a flare of Felline's earlier anger. He cursed the tech that he did not have. He had been outmatched, time and again. No matter how far he ran, he always ended up three steps behind Mumm-Ra.

On the other hand, when had that ever stopped him?

"At least they see you for the snake you are, Vultaire," Lion-O shouted. "What leader would attack his own people?"

"General Slithe," General Vultaire snapped through the loudspeaker, though this was a command and not a reply, "your orders were clear, were they not? Remove the smelly little heathen before she injures herself."

Instantly, several lizards hopped off Pumyra's hovercraft and jogged toward her. Slithe brought up the rear, his ax propped on his shoulder.

"Resstrain her," he commanded, and the lizards obeyed. Binders snapped shut on slender wrists and ankles, but Pumyra didn't seem aware. She was still screaming when the lizards hefted her onto their rounded shoulders and bore her off the field.

"Wait!" Lion-O cried. "Pumyra!"

Without fully turning to face him, Slithe pointed his upgraded ax at him and pulled the trigger. The energy blast melted a hole through solid rock next to Lion-O's head, stopping him mid-stride. He could smell the heat from the rock vaporizing the water in the air.

Slithe's lips cracked apart, showing pointed teeth. His thick tail smacked the ground once, and then he allowed his people to pull him aboard the hovercraft. It lifted and then zoomed away.

"Now then," Vultaire said, concealed behind the cockpit's darkly tinted windscreen, though Lion-O imagined him rubbing his spiderlike hands together. "Lion-O. We have some business to attend, you and I."

"We have _nothing_ to discuss, Vultaire," Lion-O said. He glanced up, squinting against the glare. Avista City had shrunken to a black speck in the blue sky, its sails scooping sun-kissed wind. Within moments, it disappeared beyond the clouds.

He blinked and returned his attention to the ground. Tygra stood to Lion-O's right. A trickle of blood oozed from the black stripe over his cheekbone, but he otherwise seemed fine. Panthro cracked his knuckles on Lion-O's right. WilyKat and WilyKit appeared, riding on Anet and Aburn's shoulders, their small faces savage. Dobo limped into view, holding his arm across a long cut that wept scarlet down his damp-sand-colored chest. Peering from behind boulders, trees, and shredded bushes, the berbils fixed scores of expressionless onyx eyes on the sky cutter.

The birds were safe, the lizards were retreating, the battle was won.

Lion-O pointed the Sword of Omens at the black sky cutter, wishing he could see Vultaire's ugly face one last time so he could punch the pretentious bird right in it. "Your people have abandoned you. You're all alone, Vultaire. You've lost."

"I beg to differ." Vultaire didn't sound defeated. He sounded pleased. "I am not alone. Mumm-Ra treats his allies well and rewards those who follow his orders. As I have been rewarded."

"Funny, I don't see him here," Tygra called scathingly. "He has servants, not allies. You're a glorified butler, Prefect. Oh, wait –" Here, Tygra gave a lopsided sneer that bared sharp fangs. "I forgot. You're not a prefect, you're a _traitor."_

_"Cats."_ Vultaire sniffed in disgust. He spoke in a fussy, businesslike way. "Even now, you fail to see beyond your ridiculously small, unsophisticated noses. You took something precious away from me, Lion-O. Now, thanks to the boon of the Ever-Living, I shall return the favor."

The hooked scavenger's beak of the sky cutter split apart to reveal an aperture that sucked all light from the immediate area. The black hole glowed purple around the edges. A purple identical to the malevolence emitted by the Sword of Plun-Darr.

Lion-O stared at it, transfixed. Was it possible that the Sword of Plun-Darr was in the sky cutter? Was it possible for an animal like Vultaire to wield Mumm-Ra's personal weapon through layers of machinery? Was it possible for Mumm-Ra to trust his precious Sword with another?

The sphere of purple energy grew, sucking more daylight into its center. Then it shot forward in a dark beam, leaving doubt in the dust. The Sword of Plun-Darr was here, and it wanted nothing more than to destroy its twin, as well as the one who had bonded with it.

"ThunderCats, _ho!"_ Lion-O cried. His fury and an undercurrent of fear spiraled down the Sword's length. The spirits within took those emotions and transformed them into power.

The slit pupil of the Eye of Thundera sprang open, nearly swallowing the crystalline red. The Sword roared. Crimson energies, shot through with sizzling blue lightning, gathered in the depths of the Eye and then exploded outward.

The red beam collided with the black beam, sending out a shockwave that threatened to flatten the mountains. The cries of Lion-O's friends were swept away like leaves before the gale.

Vultaire's lightless beam forced Lion-O to one knee, but he poured everything he had into his own attack. For a fleeting moment, he believed that the good of the Sword of Omens would overpower the evil of the Sword of Plun-Darr, as it had ever since the birth of the blades. Then he watched in horror as the non-light staved off the red light like a palm crushing downward.

The weight from above increased, and Lion-O sank to both knees. A minuscule corner of his mind couldn't help pointing out that Vultaire probably loved the sight of the Lord of the ThunderCats kneeling before his might.

The ground crumbled beneath Lion-O, making it seem as though he were burrowing downward. He fought to push Vultaire's attack away, to redirect it, but it strengthened before his eyes, visibly thickening like a flexed muscle. The Sword vibrated and the grip slipped in Lion-O's sweaty hands. Instinctively, he leaned into the attack, steadying the Sword with his shoulder. He refused to let it falter. He would not give in. He would not surrender.

A fresh burst of red shot from the Eye. It pierced the black beam.

At the same time, the black beam broke into finger-like tentacles that succeeded in grabbing the Sword. Its vibrating blade changed color, from the familiar quicksilver to an incandescent red surrounding a white-hot heart. Lines of shadow, like the cracks in the bed of a dried-up lake, crossed and zigzagged over the burning blade. The heat pouring from it singed Lion-O's eyebrows. He gave a wordless shout that nobody heard, eyes streaming. It felt like he was pushing against a mountain.

Keening, a high-pitched sound that Lion-O felt as though screwdrivers had punctured his eardrums, the Sword shattered.

He watched the pieces of his heritage fly apart like the shell of a grenade. The black beam slammed into his chest and drove him into the ground. His hand struck the rocks and the remains of the Sword of Omens, dull, tarnished, and bent, bounced from his fingers. His head struck the rocks and the sun imploded.

Silence descended upon the battlefield. Lion-O had no idea if anyone was still alive. He wasn't sure _he_ was. The otherworldly voices of the Sword had cut off as surely as a door slamming shut. Emptiness yawned in his fractured heart.

"There," Vultaire said from somewhere overhead, his voice supremely satisfied, and then he chuckled. "Now we're even."

..::~*~::..

This couldn't be happening.

Sounding bored and very far away, Vultaire called off the troops. He and the lizards withdrew, leaving utter destruction in their wake.

Lion-O sat up in a day going dark, his mane clogged with dirt. He could not summon the curiosity needed to question why Vultaire had left him alive. Most likely, that had been Mumm-Ra's orders; have Vultaire destroy the Sword, have Pumyra kill its master.

A stray ray of sunshine passed over milky, lifeless shards of metal and then dropped them into shadow. The hilt to the Sword of Omens lay not far away, on the pushed-up dirt lip of the new hole that held the king in its bottom.

He picked up the Sword, or what was left of it. It did not respond. The Eye of Thundera looked dead, as opaque and featureless as a lump of red clay. The pupil had closed to nothing. Whatever power the War Stone still possessed had locked itself away from him, now that he no longer had an instrument to control it.

As he looked at it, one thought kept running through his mind, over and over, as flat and soundless as lighted shapes on a screen.

_Happy birthday, Lion-O!_

* * *

_**A/N: **Oof, guys, I'm sorry this update is on the shorter side. I've been struggling and struggling to finish this chapter with the right feeling, and I ended up making this part short, and a second part about the same length - too long for a single update! I'm still on the fence whether it's the right way to go, but I guess you all will let me know if it's good or not when we get there. Meanwhile, hope this update was worth the wait! X3_

_Reviewer Thanks! **Billamon**, **KelseyAlicia**, **The Night Whisperer**, **St4r Hunter**, **Atea1793**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Hestia28** (Would it please you to know that there is a scene I wrote and then discarded, in which Lion-O actually performed CPR? No? Well, it exists, somewhere in the ether, LOL), **Darwin**, and **FallingStar5027**. Thank you, everyone. You are the light I am always walking toward._

_Much love,_

_Anne_


	6. Vultaire's Revenge, part four

Several days passed. Rudderless, the ThunderCats bid their friends farewell and returned home.

The morning dawned a soft, damp gray over the low rooftops of New Thundera on the plains below what was left of Thundera's great white wall. The village looked peaceful from here, new-marked fields awaiting spring planting, barns dotted here and there to house the few Thunderian mounts who had found their way back home, now trained to pull plows and wagons as well as carry riders, sturdy but modest homes built to withstand the weather, and even a small market street designed to welcome the travelers brave enough to risk the ghosts of the fallen empire. There were still craftsmen among Lion-O's people, still teachers and soldiers and merchants. Their pride wouldn't allow them to accept outside help, a sentiment Lion-O shared deep in his core. The combined efforts of the lizards and the rats had not managed to erase the heart and soul of Thundera. With time and hard work, Third Earth's cats would reclaim some of what had been theirs.

Likewise, the Sword of Omens would be repaired. Somehow.

Alone, Lion-O climbed through the ruins of his father's city, silent and dead and gray with ash turned to mud. His footfalls made no sound, save for the occasional kicked pebble – otherwise, he might have thought himself one of the ghosts. Up until a year ago, this had been the only home he'd known. Therefore, it didn't take him long to find the place where he, Tygra, Cheetara, and Snarf had burned Claudus's body to free the king's soul and send him into the Great Sky Cat's Lair.

He approached a tilted, crumbling wall. His feet disturbed something dry and scratchy at its base; bunches of flowers lay scattered by wind and rain. The cats he had helped rescue from Ratar-O's mines had obviously gathered them from the banks of the Rufus River and left them here. Heartsore, he reached up and pressed his palm against the cool wall.

Here, he'd used the Sword of Omens, heated over an open flame, to etch the insignia of the ThunderCats into the marble in the hopes that if any of their people had lived, they would see it, and know he was out there, fighting for them, avenging them.

His hand curled into a fist, claws scraping through the grooves of his carving. He rested his forehead against the wall, below his hand.

Had Pumyra seen this? Or had everything he had done this past year been for nothing?

_"There_ you are." WilyKit appeared, perched atop a set of blasted steps that led nowhere. She turned and called over her shoulder, "Found him!"

She hopped nimbly down to Lion-O's level as Felline crested the rise and walked gingerly over to them. Both made sure not to step on the flowers.

"The mayor wants to give us some sort of sending-off ceremony," Kit announced. "Tygra's gone all growly because you're holding us up."

Lion-O released a breath too slowly for it to be a sigh. He couldn't bring himself to descend to the village and face his people, not when the Gauntlet attached to his belt was little more than a container for scrap metal. On his hands and knees, he had managed to gather every last piece of the Sword out of the dirt that day and wrapped them securely in canvas. With the pommel pointing up, it was impossible to tell that the Sword was broken, if no one looked too closely at the Eye, but he knew he had let every single one of his people down.

"Back in the old days, a grandfather like Russ wouldn't have been put in any role of importance. Times have changed," Felline said.

Russ. Lion-O remembered Russ. The old cat in the rats' gulag, the one who had nearly cried when Lion-O brought water to him. Bony, gap-toothed, quaver-voiced. He could not think of a better cat to protect New Thundera for the time being.

Sometimes, Lion-O wondered if the people of New Thundera needed him. On their own, they had elected a mayor to oversee their village while the king was away. He had not only not objected, he had sanctioned this temporary governance. They needed to look out for each other, and they needed someone to make the decisions he, in his indefinite absence, could not.

"The times have changed for the better," WilyKit said emphatically. She laced her fingers across the back of her head. "I've never understood why growing old was something shameful. It's an accomplishment. Russ knows all sorts of things that the younger ones don't. I'm glad they made him mayor. It's a _good_ thing."

"Yes." Felline smiled down at Kit – but not very far down. "So much has been lost. We're lucky any of our elders survived."

Her tone made it clear that she was thinking, as Lion-O so often did, of Jaga. What would Jaga say to his former student now? It was next to impossible that the aristocratic old jaguar would approve of every choice Thundera's new king had made this past year. He probably didn't approve of a single one, in all honesty. Lion-O didn't like to admit it, even to himself, but he was afraid of reading the Book of Omens to find out. Lion-O had gotten them into this mess. He would get them out again.

He hoped.

Distracted from his brooding, he frowned at Kit and Felline. Something seemed different about them. After a moment, it dawned on him.

WilyKit's pink and purple-striped ponytail was gone. Her long hair, held in place with a pair of simple goggles, the kind meant to keep wind out of the eyes, stuck up in the back in a little curlicue. Her bangs swept sideways across her forehead, which revealed that she had _ears._ Large, feline ears like Felline's. The right one drooped at an angle, though the left swiveled and twitched normally.

Her outfit had changed, too. Gone were the stolen clothes, the dagged skirt and halter top, and gone were the gold bracelets and armbands looted from abandoned wagons. She was dressed in muted shades of forest green, cream, and walnut brown. Her fur-collared blouse had loose, detachable sleeves that stopped short above her wrists. A leather girdle, Lion-O noted with sudden, boyish embarrassment, illustrated the fact that the little wildcat, though coltish, was growing up. She wore a paneled leather skirt and a thigh holster for her flupe. Her footwear resembled the boots the wolos wore, with turned-down tops, though they left her toes and heels bare.

Felline, too, had transformed overnight. She was as short as ever, but the foreign dog's clothes had been replaced with an outfit that a cleric might have worn beneath her concealing cloak. She had loosened her star-white curls from their pins and gathered them in a high, messy ponytail that reached past her waist. A pale tan dress hugged the curves she used to keep hidden, from her collarbones to stopping just below the tops of her otherwise bare thighs. She wore a small, tight, sleeveless white jacket, belted under her breasts, which showed off the line of black rosettes on her shoulder. An ice-blue utility belt rode low on her hips, connected to belts which held up the partial leggings that swelled into armored pads over her knees. Padded blue vambraces protected her from knuckles to mid-biceps. Her footwear matched Kit's, in blue and white, and she had not neglected her thigh holster and gunblade. Except for her wide blue eyes, deceptively helpless when they weren't iced over in anger, she was almost unrecognizable as the useless, meece-like cub he'd once believed her.

"Where did you unearth those getups?" he asked, interrupting their conversation, which had moved, as it usually did with them, to food.

"Gifts from the villagers," Felline answered shyly, ducking her head. "They've been doing well here. They're relatively safe to build new lives for themselves. There is still wealth to be had in the city if they're careful. Mayor Russ says the least they can do for their king is to send him on his mission with the best left to them."

"They've got something for you, too, except you ran off before anybody else was awake and left us looking dumb when we couldn't find you," WilyKit added.

"We can't take from them when they have so little," he protested. Her words stung, considering everything he had gone through recently.

"Well, they kinda sorta had help from the Forever Bag. You didn't think we'd come here with our hands empty, did you? _Some_one has to make up for your slack." Kit put her fists on her hips and eyed him critically. "Oh, don't look so sullen. You're going to make everyone feel bad."

"Kit's right," Felline said. To soften their harsh words, she slipped her hand into his and waited until he gave her his attention. "With their help, we can make everything right. They want to do this, Lion-O, because they can't do anything else except wait for your return. It would disillusion them if you refused."

He did not take his hand back from Felline. Hers felt so small in his bigger paw, and he rather liked it. For the support, of course. Nevertheless, his mutinous thoughts must have shown on his face, for WilyKit grabbed his other hand and tugged.

"Come on, Your Majesty," she said, grinning. "Your public awaits."

Lion-O considered refusing to budge. It might have been funny to see the two of them struggle to move him when he was so much heavier, but he reconsidered in the same instant. Kit and Felline had always had the most faith in him and had supported him beyond the boundaries of reason on more than one occasion. So, endeavoring to shrug off his gloom, he allowed them to lead him down the hill.

..::~*~::..

Tygra piloted the _Feliner_ from a field just beyond New Thundera's outskirts. It lifted like a large, white albatross amid the flurried remains of the wildflowers, which had bloomed last summer in spite of the lizards' efforts to salt the earth.

Lion-O stood in the open doorway. Rain struck his fur and left droplets that spread across the _Feliner_'s windscreen like cracks. His new clothes, though more subdued than his old outfit in shades of royal blue and indigo, were edged in alloys which glittered golden in the muted sunlight. A two-toned shirt hugged his upper body, leaving his right arm bare. The left was protected by a short sleeve and a supple glove fashioned to fit inside the Gauntlet of Omens. He wore a spaulder on his left shoulder, its lames pointed, belted crosswise over his chest. Trousers, tucked into poleyns, were loose the way he liked them. Toeless sabatons covered the arches of his feet. His belt wrapped over stiff leather faulds, lined with steel plates, the lower layer of which buckled across his thighs. The Gauntlet hung, a familiar presence, from his left hip.

Good armor, easy to move in. Simple armor, with no need to proclaim that it adorned a king. His mane whipped in the wind, getting in his mouth, for the spikes were long enough now to brush his shoulders when he moved his head – and, finally, to his intense but deep-down private relief, it was showing signs of growing farther along his cheekbones and jaw. Someday, those signs would manifest as a full lion's beard. No longer would he be ridiculed as the child king of the ThunderCats.

When he raised his hand in farewell, the crowd of cats that had gathered at the edge of the field sent up a great cheer, waving their arms in the air. It took him an emotional moment to realize that what he was feeling was pride.

He thumbed the pad to seal the door.

"So where are we headed?" Panthro asked from the copilot's seat. He crossed his thick arms and tilted his head back. His eyelids were sealed as tightly as the door.

Lion-O took his seat at the navigation console. Snarf jumped into his lap. The little petcat turned three circles on his tiny paws and then curled up with a contented huff, ready for a long nap. He was a thinner critter than he had been back in the day, his red fur thicker and coarser from living on the rough. Lion-O scratched the tuft of yellow fur between his tasseled ears. "I can think of only one animal who might help us now," he said. "Problem is, I don't know where to find him. Last I saw, he left on a journey to return some stolen swords to their owners."

He looked over at Felline. She looked back at him. Then she grinned, a fierce, triumphant grin that he couldn't help returning.

"What are you talking about?" Tygra asked with thinly veiled irritation, looking back and forth between them. "Who do you two know that I don't?"

"Hattanz-O!" Lion-O and Felline said at the same time.

_"Who?"_ Tygra, Panthro, Cheetara, WilyKat, and WilyKit chorused.

* * *

_**A/N: **Hello, Dear Readers! In spite of my doubts, I have decided to move on with what I have. Tell me honestly, were the big blocks of description too much? Or is it okay because this book is based on visual media story-telling? Also, I took all new outfits from Dan Norton's early character concepts (Felline's is one of Cheetara's and Lion-O's is one of Tygra's), displayed on DeviantArt. Also Also, I changed the spelling of Hattanz-O's name (from Hattanzō) because . . . it just makes more sense to me this way?_

_Reviewer Thanks! **KelseyAlicia**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Atea1793**, **FallingStar5027**, **Lionessa** (I wasn't sure if the Sword had broken in the original series, but I understand now that it has - twice! I'm actually really happy to know that I wasn't taking this in a totally alien direction, haha), **St4r Hunter**, **The Night Whisperer**, **Darwin**, and **Hestia28** (hee, I loved your review! I'm glad I'm getting people all riled up - I'll try really hard from now on for some Felli-O, promise)._

_Until next time,_

_Anne_


	7. Seeking the Hammer of Thundera, part one

Why were those idiots always so _noisy?_

Pumyra, lying on her back with her hands behind her head, lifted her elbows so that her arms plugged her ears. The racket inside the _Black Pyramid's_ common room lessened but did not disappear.

They lived here, all five of Mumm-Ra's generals. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to be, although the company left a lot to be desired. Even the dog gladiators in the cells below The Pit had behaved with more civility than these two. Eyes closed, she scrunched up her nose, trying to block out their voices through sheer force of will. Her bare foot, its leg crossed over the other, bounced in an increasing tempo until she could stand the noise no longer.

"Will you mangy mutants shut up?!" she roared, springing off the bench. The stark, cold, artificial lighting, the recycled air_,_ and her abrupt return to vertical made her dizzy

How did she get here, and what had she been doing? wondered a small, anxious voice inside her head. She scowled until it lapsed, again, into silence.

Addicus and Kaynar looked at her, one glowering resentfully under shelf-like brows, the other faking an expression of polite interest.

Deliberately holding her gaze, Addicus bit a raw fish in half and then threw the other half at Kaynar. It hit with a wet smack, trailing guts down the jackalman's muzzle, and the game was on again. Hooting with vicious laughter, Kaynar picked up a greasy drumstick and clobbered Addicus with it. Addicus fell back with Kaynar on top of him. They wrestled around on the floor, bumping into the wall and the furniture, while dishes of rat-prepared food fell on them and broke.

They rolled one way, then back, colliding with the table's single leg, which wrenched the bolts out of the floor tiles. A bowl of jellied slugs slid off and upended all over Pumyra's feet. Slime oozed between her toes.

With a hair-raising screech, she dove on top of the monkey and the jackalman, but she was fighting for blood. She got it, too, when her claws raked across Addicus's face, leaving five gaping furrows from just below his eye to the opposite corner of his mouth.

Addicus bellowed in pain and threw a punch in her direction that missed. Her knuckles smashed into his already flat nose, driving the back of his head into the floor. He immediately went limp.

Kaynar doubled over in laughter at the sight of his partner, his open eyes half-rolled up, his tongue lolling, orange goop mashed into his mane. "What a nincompoop!" he howled gleefully.

Still tingling with a rage that felt like lightning shooting through her veins, Pumyra kicked him flat and then shoved her forearm into his windpipe. "Shut up," she growled into his face. "Shut up. Shut. _Up."_

"Ooo, you know I like it rough," Kaynar purred maliciously, if somewhat constricted. "Here, pretty kitty."

She dug her arm harder into his throat. He fluttered his eyelashes at her.

That time, her screech could have shattered glass. She raised her arm, fingers locked, claws extended, fully intending to rip the mass of putty he called a brain out through his nostrils.

Long fingers closed on her wrist and squeezed.

"Let go!" she rasped.

Vultaire did, so she jumped to safety, crouching low like the cornered animal she was. Breathing hard, she resisted the urge to scream obscenities. She hated being touched. She especially hated being restrained. It reminded her too much of . . . him . . . who had always grabbed her, held her back. _Lessened_ her.

The door whooshed shut behind Vultaire. He studied the scene through narrow yellow eyes, his hands clasped behind his folded wings. Addicus lay insensate, blood mixing with drool, his sweaty bulk taking up half the room. His fish-breath could have knocked out a comolbur. The table and the rugs were a disaster.

Pumyra bristled from her corner. Vultaire's disapproval radiated from every feather. He didn't need to speak. She hoped he wouldn't. His stupid voice grated on her nerves.

Sober at last, Kaynar sat up, wiping strings of melted cheese and chunks of gravy out of his fur. He then licked the mess off his hand.

Revolted, Pumyra shot to her feet.

Her movement caught Vultaire's beady eye. "I wouldn't have expected you to sink to their level," the vulture observed.

"Who, a barbarian like me?" Pumyra asked with scathing sweetness. She and the three mutants dressed alike, in ragged, fur-lined skins, in leather thongs that wrapped hands and feet, in mismatched bits of metal and bone armor. It amazed her that the cats had never made that connection. Vultaire alone dressed as befit his former status. One of the reasons Slithe, Kaynar, and Addicus despised him so much.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," the expatriate returned without a trace of shame. "You and I never quite saw eye to eye, did we?"

"No," she said. She let her loathing drip from the single word like albumen.

Vultaire shrugged crooked shoulders. "So you say. I don't suppose those lunkheads left us anything to eat?"

"Sure," Pumyra said. She bent, scooped up a handful of slug jelly, and then flung it at Vultaire. "Knock yourself out."

A perverse pleasure flowed hot at the sight of Vultaire, staring in shock at her through a mask of slime. Head high, shoulders tense, and fists shaking, Pumyra marched out of the common room.

Sometimes, she longed for somewhere else to be.

She paced the blue-lit catwalk outside her quarters, hunched over her crossed arms, her cold hands tucked into her armpits. She couldn't work with these animals. It had been better out there, on her own, answering to no one but her beloved Master. Here, armed lizard guards and tattletale rat slaves kept them cloistered in one of the cell blocks. The monkey and the jackalman both were too lazy to consider breaking out and preferred gorging themselves all day long in the common room, growing fat with inaction. The only reason Pumyra didn't fight her way out was that she couldn't dream of disobeying her Master. Her love for Him transcended all, often replacing the need for sleep, or quelling her appetite. All she needed to live was Him.

But she had failed Him, hadn't she? She shook her head to rid it of the buzzing flies of doubt and confusion. She had let Him down, somehow.

She had allowed Lion-O to slip from His grasp yet again.

She had _failed._

This, then, was her punishment. Boxed into close quarters with those fools Kaynar and Addicus, forced to answer to that smug, condescending Vultaire. She could not be trusted outside the _Pyramid_ without Slithe for an escort, though she'd heard faint whispering doubt about the lizard leader, too, among the slaves. Distrust. Disfavor.

Mumm-Ra was disappointed in their performance so far. So He was punishing them.

"Master!" Pumyra lifted her head and called for Him, her love and her pain throbbing in her voice, which echoed down the empty corridor. He did not reply. She turned, calling the other way. "Master! Please forgive me! I serve only you, Master!"

The emptiness mocked her with memories of . . . him . . . walking away while she lay, trapped and dying, beneath a fallen block of masonry.

A sob caught in her throat. "Master," she whimpered, leaning against the bulkhead. She slid down it as tears poured down her face. "Please . . ."

No one answered.

..::~*~::..

Felline had forgotten how much Tygra and the others didn't know about the events of that day.

_"You lost the Sword of Omens in a duel?"_ Tygra bellowed. He turned to face Lion-O, but the yoke of the _Feliner_ jerked under his hands and the aircraft lost quite a bit of height, causing everyone to grab something solid. Busy resuming their altitude and calming the shrieking alarms, Tygra couldn't strangle his little brother, though clearly, he wanted to.

Lion-O winced. "Come on, Tygra, that was months ago. No need to shout –"

"And then you dueled the same guy again to get it _back?" _Tygra smacked the heel of his hand into his forehead and groaned. "What is wrong with you?"

"You weren't there," Lion-O said, struggling to keep his temper in check. "Trust me, this guy was on the prowl, and once he targeted me, he wasn't going to take no for an answer."

"Didn't you say he started to walk away after you said no?" Tygra said, seizing on an opportunity to poke holes in Lion-O's defense.

Lion-O bristled. "Maybe he would have walked, maybe not. There was something about him. He put our pride on the line. You would have done the same thing I did."

"Like fun I would have! I would have left the scene, especially since I knew people were _waiting for me."_

"And gotten a dagger in the back! I'm telling you, Tygra, this guy wasn't above taking a sword he wanted from a corpse."

"Lucky for you Felline was there, then."

"I had it handled!"

"This explains a lot," Cheetara said mildly while the brothers continued to shout at each other.

"That we're all crazy to follow this kid?" Panthro rumbled. He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it, looking as though he wished he could render himself temporarily deaf. "I knew that from the start."

Tygra snarled through his sinuses. "You always let your emotions dictate your actions. You should never have let some mixed-species nobody worm under your skin like that."

"Everything turned out all right!" Lion-O insisted.

"Except now the Sword is broken," WilyKat said under his breath to his sister.

Tygra heard him. He grimaced in a way that showed clenched teeth, as though he was about to be ill but was determined to keep it down. He spoke with remarkable constraint, though. "All right, enough. That's in the past. This is now. Where do we find an itinerant swordsmith?"

His new clothes made him look older than twenty-one, a veteran soldier of the throne. Like Lion-O, his two-toned garments were edged in a golden alloy, and loose black trousers were tucked into the poleyns strapped over high, toeless boots. An open fur collar framed his jaw, and a short-sleeved tunic in black and gray supported twin pauldrons. His two favorite pistols rode in holsters attached to his utility belt, Javan's whip in a loop on the back.

Satisfied that the _Feliner_ would hold her course, he fiddled with the strap of his fingerless gloves. "We can't continue to fly around Third Earth until we run into him, you know."

"Your superior intellect makes a fool of me again, Tygra," Lion-O said sarcastically.

_"My_ intellect has nothing to do with it."

The brothers glared at each other. Felline smiled down at her lap, relieved that this, at least, was back to normal.

"I think we should split up," Cheetara said. She was resplendent in crimson. Her top bared her cleavage but hugged her midsection like a jealous lover, its one sleeve bell-shaped, tied tight at the wrist. A thick golden bracelet, which, she had hinted, held several secrets inside, adorned the opposite wrist. Her pants clung to her long, strong legs, paneled in armor, though they left her calves uncovered. Matching bracelets ringed her ankles. She crossed them, sitting forward. "Tygra and I could visit Swordtown."

"Yeah!" WilyKat cried. He jumped up, his tail the only thing that kept him from overbalancing on his coltish legs. He had cut his brown and white mane, shearing it in the back but leaving it long enough to flop across his forehead, which revealed his lopsided ears. He wore the same type of goggles as Kit's atop his head. His forest-green jumpsuit supported numerous harnesses and pouches across his chest, around his hips, and down his legs, its walnut-brown bell sleeves slashed to show the cream-colored shirt beneath. He held up two fingers in a V, his hand encased in a fingerless glove. "Kit and I can take the roads from there. Someone ought to have heard of him."

"Oh, no, you don't," Panthro disagreed. He stood up, scowling down at the young wildcat. His impressive sideburns, once black as soot, had grown long and white in the months since he had joined them, though his topknot was as glossily black as ever. His black harem trousers were familiar, but he now wore a sleeveless maroon shirt, one with a high collar closed around his thick neck with a heavy metal ring. He poked a finger between Kat's eyes, his prosthetic hands gauntleted in maroon padding. A segmented belt wider than Kat's head was long creaked around his waist. "I'm not letting you two run off alone again. You'll stay here with me. Repairing the Sword isn't our only problem. We've got to pinpoint the location of the final Power Stone before Ol' Scabby does."

"Oh, come on, Panthro," WilyKit whined. She jumped up to stand with her brother. They assumed identical postures, arms folded, hips and heads cocked like rifles. "You have Snarf to keep you company."

Panthro shot the petcat a suspicious look through narrowed eyes. Mischievously, Snarf held out a paw as though holding a spoon and said, "Aah."

A muscle jumped in Panthro's temple. Felline stifled a giggle.

"Besides," Kat went on matter-of-factly, "we'll use our hoverboards to save time. There's no way you can come with us. You're too heavy."

The muscle jumped again. "You callin' me fat?" Panthro demanded.

"No," Kit said with a coquettish tilt of her shoulders. _"Sturdy."_

"Why you little . . ." Panthro left the insult hanging and threw himself back into his seat, which squealed in protest. "Fine!" he exploded. He glared at Lion-O and Felline as if they were responsible for this insubordination. "That means you two better find where the Drifter calls home."

..::~*~::..

The necromechs had destroyed the original velocycles long ago when they had attacked the ThunderTank, but the berbils had outfitted the _Feliner_ to make up for their loss, a surprise for their feline friends. Tygra and Cheetara boarded one of the new hoverbikes, equipped with the same hover technology as the twins' boards, only about ten times as powerful. Cheetara leaned into Tygra, her long arms wound around his waist, her chin on his shoulder. He twisted the throttle and the bike purred.

"Be careful out there, little brother," he said, his brown eyes serious. "Stay out of trouble. You can't rely on the Sword anymore, and I'm in no hurry to be king again."

"Pumyra isn't here to report our plans to Mumm-Ra. We should be able to fly under his radar for a few days," Felline reminded him. She looked at Cheetara. "Do you have your locator?"

"On and transmitting," Cheetara, who wore one of Panthro's new location devices clipped to her upper arm, assured her. The devices could not communicate with each other, but the _Feliner's_ computers could locate each of the cats at any time. Splitting up may not have been the safest idea, but it was the best one they had.

WilyKit snapped her goggles over eyes, and WilyKat buttoned his own locator into one of his pouches.

"Be back here in three days," Felline said. "No excuses."

Both gave her a thumbs-up.

"I'll ask Hattanz-O to lend me something until the Sword of Omens is repaired," Lion-O promised Tygra.

"Good luck."

"And to you," Lion-O returned. The brothers briefly clasped hands and then Lion-O stepped back.

The canopy sealed, and Tygra's velocycle followed Kit and Kat out of the _Feliner's_ bay in a rush of displaced air.

Lion-O hopped into the second cycle and looked expectantly at Felline. She nodded at him, but first turned to Panthro.

"If you find anything to do with the next Stone, come get us immediately," she said, patting the locator she wore clipped to her belt.

"Likewise," he rumbled. His prosthetic hand sought his topknot, and he cast a furtive glance at Lion-O, who revved the velocycle's engine. "Try to keep him out of trouble, will you?"

"I'll try, but it was my idea for him to fight the Duelist a second time to win back the Sword," she said, and then she laughed at his expression. She reached up, as high as she could, and brushed a kiss on his whiskery jaw. "We'll be back soon, Panthro, don't worry."

"How can I not worry?" he grumped, crossing his arms in his best imitation of a walled fortress. "Buncha kids."

"Snyar snyar," Snarf agreed, sitting on Panthro's big foot.

Gingerly, Felline slid in behind Lion-O.

"Hold tight," he told her, and sealed the canopy. The cockpit flickered to life around them, the noise of the engine and the wind outside cutting back to a low hum.

Though Felline couldn't bring herself to lean against him the way Cheetara had Tygra, she put her hands on his waist and tried not to gulp too loudly or grip with her knees too strongly as the velocycle leaped into the bright blue sky. The _Feliner_ disappeared quickly into the concealing clouds behind them.

* * *

_**A/N: **EDIT** The last section of this chapter is new and was added on 8/21/19 in response to some very good comments my reviewers made. I feel like I originally ended this update too soon, so I hope this helps. :3**_

_It's so nice when I feel inspired to write, and the words flow out (almost) effortlessly. That's largely thanks to you, Dear Readers, and all the encouragement you give me. And on that note:_

_Reviewer Thanks! **KelseyAlicia**, **Heart of the Demons**, **St4r Hunter**, **Atea1793**, **Lionessa**, **The Night Whisperer**, **Hestia28 **(hee, your happiness makes writing this so worthwhile! Thank you!), **Seeds of Destruction**, **rosewhip889**, and **LunaStone115**._

_All my love,_

_Anne_


	8. Seeking the Hammer of Thundera, part two

_**A/N1:** Greetings, Dear Readers! A small request: If you read Chapter Three, part one on the day that I posted it or even a couple of days later, please go back for a very small scene that I added onto the end - it leads straight to this update. I felt later that it needed to be there rather than here. Thank you!_

* * *

Lion-O dropped the velocycle low to the ground and flew to the east, where multiple rivers flowed swift and brown and the trees clustered along their banks. There, they learned that Hattanz-O, famous for his role in the Duelist's defeat, had returned home in victory, and they were proudly directed to his workshop in Bunnyburgh.

A lop-eared rabbit, his long hair pulled back and secured with a sateen ribbon, leaned against a haphazard picket fence. He spat out a willow twig as the hoverbike glissaded up to the fence and then powered down. When he saw who emerged from the unsealed canopy, he opened the crooked gate, beaming so widely that his large front teeth gleamed and his dark eyes closed to crescents.

Behind him, autumn gold carpeted a low hill. A line of wash hung drying from one end of it, snapping like flags in the wind. Children's playthings lay scattered in the yard where little ones had abandoned them for chores inside the burrow.

"Lion-O!" the rabbit greeted in his unexpectedly cultured baritone. He came out to meet them. "Felline! It is good to see you, my friends, good to see you. It is fortunate you have found me at home. I leave tomorrow for the market in Foxford."

Felline had never seen the diminutive swordsmith so well-groomed and dapper, or smelling so clean. He pressed her hand warmly between both of his paws, seeming truly glad to see them.

"I'm afraid this isn't a social visit, Hattanz-O," Lion-O said in a low voice, so that the small yet pretty rabbit standing curiously in the doorway that led into the hill, a kit in her arms and several more peering around her ankles, wouldn't hear. "I need your help."

The wind rustled the branches of the towering weeping willow that protected Hattanz-O's snug burrow from the weather. Hattanz-O himself said nothing as Lion-O showed him what was inside the Gauntlet of Omens. He merely stroked his furry chin, brows furrowed.

"Yes . . . hmm . . ." he mumbled, sounding as distracted as he had the first time they'd met him. "Er . . . I suppose . . . you'd better . . . come in the back . . . Follow me."

After sharing a meaningful glance, Felline and Lion-O fell into step behind their host. Hattanz-O waved reassuringly at his wife. She, with a dubious look at the two tall ThunderCats, pulled her children inside the burrow and closed the door. Hattanz-O, deep in thought, his long feet occasionally leaving the ground so that he drifted along like a toy boat in a stream, led Lion-O and Felline around the back side of the hill, where several stone chimneys breathed wispy gray smoke into the wind. He opened a warped wooden door, jiggling the handle until it unstuck from the frame, and motioned them inside.

A neat dirt tunnel led to his workshop. Anvils, hammers, tongs, and swords decorated the rough earthen walls, the intruding roots of the willow blackened by soot. Scarred and scorched workbenches supported thick stacks of hand-drawn designs and scrap buckets, a faucet dripped into a drain in the corner, and the stink of iron hazed over all.

Felline protested the rosy glow of the furnace and the close, humid air with a heartfelt sigh. Lion-O grinned at her, obviously reveling in the heat. When she made a face at him, he snickered. She felt like slapping him, but she refrained. It had been so long since he'd teased her and she'd sort of . . . missed it.

"Here's the thing," Hattanz-O said, sobering both of them right up. "I can't help you. I work in iron and steel. I have studied nothing of the arcane arts. This –" he rapped his knuckles on the Gauntlet and looked gravely up at Lion-O, "this is beyond even my abilities, my friend."

Lion-O sagged. "Is there nothing you can do?"

"I'm afraid not."

As though all of her bones had turned to silt, Felline unknowingly sat on an anvil, her tail and her ears drooping. Was that it, then? Was this the end of their long journey? They couldn't fight without the Sword of Omens and the War Stone. Mumm-Ra, his evil sorcery boosted by the Tech Stone, would kill them all.

Hattanz-O did not misread their dismay. He rubbed his cheek, then the back of his neck. He sank into thought. At last, he seemed to come to a decision, though with apparent reluctance.

"There might be a way," he said, brows knitted. "In circles within circles of smiths and guilds, I have heard tell of a legendary hammer, fashioned by the gods themselves, which can work magic the likes of which hasn't been seen in centuries. It may be the only thing powerful enough to repair something as unique as the Sword of Omens."

"If anything like that actually exists, I've never heard of it," Lion-O said.

"Yes, you have," Felline corrected him, surprised. "It was in the Book of Omens."

"You mean – you're talking about –" Lion-O faltered, and then an expression of hope blazed from his dark blue eyes. "The Hammer of Thundera!"

"Does it still exist, do you think?"

"No one knows what happened to it after the _Black Pyramid_ crash-landed on Third Earth, but the Stones survived, so it has to be here somewhere."

"What if it's still inside the _Black Pyramid?"_

Lion-O hesitated, but then he shook his head. "If Mumm-Ra had it, he wouldn't risk any stories leaking out about something so powerful, not before he had the War Stone in his possession. He would have used it to remove the Stone instead of relying on that ritual."

"Which didn't work."

"Exactly. He doesn't have it."

"You speak in riddles, friends," Hattanz-O broke in with a rueful chuckle.

"We've heard of a legendary hammer," Lion-O said apologetically. "It's a relic of the ancient cats, my ancestors. It was what forged the Sword of Omens in the first place."

Hattanz-O stroked his chin, once more thoughtful. "Then I urge you to seek it out, friend Lion-O. I can tell you at least this much. Legend goes that the hammer chooses its master, not the other way around. The rumor which last reached my long ears hints that it and the one it has been entrusted to were glimpsed far to the south, beyond the Greater Barrier where the prairies roll under wide-open skies and the bull-men are formed of iron. More than that, I cannot say, though I wish it otherwise. Instead, I think I have something here that could help."

He pawed through a barrel of swords, then examined the weapons adorning his rough walls, coming up with one that gleamed golden. Felline recognized it immediately. The Sword of Hattanz-O.

"I can't take that," Lion-O said immediately.

Hattanz-O laughed at him. "Of course you can, and you will, and you will do great things with it. I could gift my masterpiece to no other swordsman. I bid you good luck, ThunderCats, and godspeed, and may one day we meet again."

..::~*~::..

_Beloved._

Pumyra opened her eyes to a box of a room devoid of color, consisting of silver-white walls and floor and gray-black shadows. A fan turned languidly behind the grate in the ceiling. Its blades cut the low light into revolving strips. She sat up, holding her head. The nondescript blanket below her was barely mussed. The air was neither warm nor cool. There were no windows this deep in the _Pyramid._ No smells. Few sounds. So what had woken her?

_Come to me, Beloved._

"Master?" she asked thickly, her mind cobwebbed with sleep.

_Come!_

She saw it, then. Color. A fiery pink. The black jewel pendant she wore on a string around her neck was glowing.

She closed her fingers around it, dousing the glow, but its warmth burned the cobwebs from her mind. Mumm-Ra was calling her. The pendant had been a gift from Him, and how He had kept in touch with her during that interminable journey with . . . him.

The jewel pulsed with her Master's need, His desire for her. Pumyra leaped to her feet and hastened from her room. Down the corridors she flew on long, strong legs, bare feet slapping on the tiles. She bypassed the sluggish lifts for the stairs. Her heart pattered lightly in her chest, longing to see Him again, to reunite with her one true love.

The doors to Mumm-Ra's inner sanctum whooshed open and Pumyra flitted inside.

"I am here, Master," she called breathlessly.

Out of the shadows, He came. He was small and thin, hunched within His tattered red cloak, His emaciated body wrapped in trailing bandages. Pumyra, however, only saw the bottomless eyes, glowing like red coals with a power unmatched in the entire universe.

"Excellent, my dear," He said in His clotted voice. He lifted a skeletal hand and caressed the side of her face.

Her eyes drifted shut, and she leaned into His touch.

"Now that we are all present, we may begin," He added.

The hand dropped away. Pumyra's eyes snapped open. She and her Master were not alone!

As Mumm-Ra shuffled around the pool sunken in the center of the room, which radiated eldritch blue light, she caught sight of another. Jealousy and a fighting instinct burned hot in her chest. Her hands closed into fists, and a growl worked its way up her throat.

Slithe merely looked at her out of his yellow slits of eyes. His fins fanned around his cheeks and reflected the eldritch light, throwing weird shadows across his bloated, reptilian features.

After a short struggle with herself, Pumyra tried to control her reaction, only because she knew Mumm-Ra did not like it. He did not allow anyone else to speak when He had something to say. Therefore, she swallowed the growl and stood straight, striving to emulate her rival's impassiveness.

Mumm-Ra either did not notice her struggle, or chose to ignore it. He lifted two wasted arms from the confines of the cloak and spread knobbly, dirty scab-colored fingers over the pool. The Well of Souls, which had returned life to Pumyra's lifeless body. The water, which seemed more like a clear blue gel than actual water, responded in ripples that became waves. Not a drop splashed onto the pool's rim or Mumm-Ra's bare, long-nailed toes, but ghostlike figures rose from the depths. The shiny gel replicated every detail, so that facial expressions could easily be recognized, even if the faces themselves were semitransparent.

Pumyra felt a jolt all the way down to her toes. The figures cloned the ThunderCats, grouped together and talking animatedly, though silently. The ThunderCats, and . . . him.

The heat of jealousy and the electrifying surprise drained out of Pumyra, replaced by a glacial indifference. She studied the pellucid blue face of her king. He was not happy, she saw, but she felt no answering empathy, nor did she feel glad. She simply did not care. Her former companions were obviously in the middle of one of their casual group councils, arguing back and forth over something inconsequential. WilyKat jumped up and down to make a point, but Panthro put a paw on his head and squashed him down; the kitten laughed. The others joined in and they wasted a few moments in meaningless mirth.

. . . he . . . looked down and said something unintelligible to Felline, who held Snarf in her arms. She smiled up at him in that quiet way of hers, while Snarf made his silent snarf sounds as though in agreement.

. . . and feeling rushed back. Pumyra grunted, pressing a fist to her chest, for it felt as though her heart had been pierced with a needle. Felline. They had been friends, hadn't they? Felline would understand why Pumyra hated it here. Felline would –

"Pay no mind, Beloved," Mumm-Ra said calmly. "They are beneath you."

His measured voice filled her ears, blocking all extraneous thought.

"Of course, Master," Pumyra said in monotone. He was right. These animals meant nothing to her. She straightened, letting her hand fall. "Do the Spirits have a mission for me?"

For the Ancient Spirits were the all-knowing, all-benevolent, ancient purveyors of power and rule. It was by their counsel that Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living, faithful servant of order and peace, had come so close to unifying the universe once before.

"We do." Mumm-Ra waved his hand, as though backhanding a plate off a table. The ghostly figures in the pool collapsed like melted wax, and a new scene arose. A ring of sleeping volcanic mountains. A prairie that stretched for hundreds of miles. A town, bustling with large creatures. A new figure, features blurred and indistinct, but by its posture, Pumyra surmised that it was a blacksmith. The pool zoomed in on the tool in its hand and then froze there.

A hammer. Oddly, it looked like a roaring lion's head, the back of its flowing mane flattened. She'd never seen anything like it, but . . .

Pumyra tilted her head. It was familiar to her.

"The ThunderCats seek something that was stolen from me many centuries ago," Mumm-Ra said. "I want it back. You, Pumyra and Slithe, will retrieve it before the cats get their hands on it."

Pumyra dropped to one knee. "I will not fail you, Master," she said to the floor.

"I know you won't," Mumm-Ra said, and then he laughed like a delighted child. Chuckling, he held his arms over what was an ordinary pool of water, his bandages and his cloak floating on the still air, strings of spit clinging to his pointed teeth.

Pumyra cast a sidelong glance at Slithe, intimating that he should hurry if he didn't want to be left behind. What did she need a lizard like him for, anyway? She was perfectly capable of outwitting . . . him . . . on her own.

Slithe, however, was studying the four tall statues that stood behind their master in a tight half-moon as though he hadn't heard a word their master had said.

Pumyra frowned. They were just four crude stone statues, crumbling and blackened with age. Four animals, limbs and bodies hidden beneath carved robes that fell straight from their rounded shoulders to the floor. Curious what could have gotten his attention, Pumyra briefly lifted her eyes to them.

She thought she saw a spot of reflected reddish light flicker over four pairs of blank stone eyes. The spot ran from the reptile, to the ape, then the jackal, and then the bird.

She blinked. The spot vanished, the statues were lifeless stone, Mumm-Ra was cloaked head to toe in the shadowy center of their half-moon, His laughter silenced, the pool was motionless and dark, and Slithe was the one leaving her behind. She followed him from the room, ready for some action.

The ThunderCats weren't going to know what had hit them.

* * *

_**A/N2: **__Labor Day! Finally, a day off where I could work on this, haha._

_Reviewer Thanks! **KelseyAlicia**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Blacktiger93**, **The Night Whisperer**, **Atea1793**, **Hestia28** (I'm really glad you're picking up on Pumyra's problem - it's a very tricky line for me to walk! But it seems like you're getting it, so I'm happy with that, hee. Also, yes, "sturdy." LOL!), and **St4r Hunter**._

_Here's hoping you've enjoyed this update!_

_Love,_

_Anne_


	9. Seeking the Hammer of Thundera, part 3

Reunited and anxious for some good news, the ThunderCats flew south for a full week. Wishing to keep a low profile, Tygra, piloting the _Feliner,_ barely cleared the razor-sharp peaks of a towering mountain range, its slopes whitened by snow. In the distance, a land green with crops unrolled toward the sky. They left their shining aircraft parked in tall grass yellowing in the heat of late summer, and hiked into town on foot.

Cautiously, the ThunderCats made their way to a repurposed stable right in the middle of a bright, hot, noisome street. The only thing that distinguished their destination from all the other shops on the street was the sign nailed above the narrow door: _The Iron Oxen._

"Come on," Lion-O muttered. He pushed through the rusty gate first, stepping off the dirty street into the dirtier yard.

Hattanz-O's rumor had led them far off the beaten path to Oxborough. It was as different from Swordtown as it could possibly be. Swordtown had relied on machinery to run its beast-like forges. Here, hulking creatures of flesh and blood provided the power. While Swordtown had been populated by drifters of every species, this little settlement had flourished smack dab in the middle of minotaur country. Felline wondered how many foreigners found their way to this quiet rural town.

The seven travel-worn cats passed between iron showpieces lining either side of the path like sentinels: Cart wheels and plow blades, banded barrels and cookpots on tripods, beautiful birdbaths and wall decorations, statues of animals – those who spoke and those who didn't, all masterpieces, all works of art – gleamed chrome or oxidized red in the sun.

At the door, Panthro stopped Lion-O. "Are you sure this isn't a trap?"

Unease spread through the group. No one could blame the old general for asking – after all the times they'd been betrayed, they'd be stupid not to see it coming now.

Felline turned and surveyed the street. As far as she could tell, no one had noticed their trek through the town. Smiths banged away with their hammers, discordant and loud in the heat. The street teemed with minotaurs hurrying to some other errand, looking as if they'd turned down this dusty avenue by accident. Watch chains glinted across the shabby waistcoats of the bulls, and checkered handkerchiefs flapped from their back pockets. The heifers wore bonnets tied behind their stubby horns, dragging along calves bigger than WilyKit, who clung to their mothers' aprons. Strapping younglings lugged carts behind their employers in their cleanest skins and coveralls. None spared the strangers in their midst a second thought. Peace and the slow languor it brought pressed down on them as heavily as the sun's rays.

"Hattanz-O wouldn't lie to us," Felline said at last.

"Only one way to find out," Cheetara said with a shrug, so Lion-O pulled open the door.

The building was enclosed on three sides, none of which housed the freestanding door. Felline watched as Cheetara and Tygra entered after Lion-O and moved left along a waist-high, three-rail fence. WilyKit and WilyKat squeezed past Panthro through the door. As usual, she was the last one in. They made way for her, jostling those in front as a worn velvet rope forced them into the first stall, which she assumed was the office. The shade beneath the slanted roof offered relief from the merciless sun. Felline brushed a stray curl off her neck.

The office, if that was what it was, surprised her. It was just as dirty as everything else so far but meticulously organized. The desk, encased in a thick coat of grime, hosted neat stacks of paper-filled trays. One metal cup held what looked like twists of wire-thin metal, and another a handful of broken, frayed quills. A tin of stained pen nibs sat next to that. A filing cabinet stood guard from the corner, and more showpieces – weapons, this time, mostly swords – took up the right-hand wall.

"Can I help you?" asked a voice as deep as the innards of a volcano. A minotaur, presumably the proprietor, approached from the direction of the loudest hammering, unhooking the velvet rope as he did. He wiped his hands in a rag so stained it was only a shade or two lighter than his extremely short and close-lying black fur. He wore no shirt. Sweat glistened across his massive chest. His horns curled magnificently on either side of his heavy, triangular head, and a plain ring dangled from his septum. Billowing trousers flapped around his hooves with each step, fitting easily over his crooked knees and high, surprisingly svelte ankles.

"Maybe," Lion-O answered him, his voice gruffer than usual. Felline's heart twisted. He was still in a great deal of emotional turmoil over the broken Sword. With each day that passed, he sank further into a brooding mire. "I'm looking for a blacksmith."

The minotaur said nothing. One brow rose over a tiny eye.

"A specific blacksmith," Lion-O added, locking stares with the mountainous bovine as though trying to communicate his meaning telepathically. A tense moment passed.

Abruptly, the minotaur turned and marched back past the rope, leaving it swinging, and bellowed, _"BEN!"_ in a voice that shook soot from the rafters.

The cats exchanged perplexed looks as a muffled reply took the place of the banging.

"Get your furry butt out here! You've got customers," the minotaur roared.

Another unintelligible reply, longer than before.

"I don't care! It's your call!"

There was a curse, and then the ringing of metal on metal, as if someone had thrown a pair of tongs onto an anvil.

"Look, send them packing if you want," the minotaur retorted, apparently unaware that everyone from there halfway to New Thundera could hear him. "You've got five minutes."

"Ten!" indignantly cried a much smaller figure than Felline had been expecting when it rocketed out of a stall.

The minotaur waved over his shoulder, disappearing into another stall. The banging resumed.

"Slave driver," the figure named Ben muttered.

Felline squinted, unable to see him in the low light of the stables. This was apparently true for him, too, because he didn't react to their appearance at all.

"Welcome to The Iron Oxen. The name's Ben, and if you're looking for the best smith this side of the Hoarfrost Mountains, that's me, not the glorified moo-cow back there."

He spoke very fast. He moved fast, too. He strode to the desk without glancing at any of them, nearly stepping on Snarf, and began opening drawers. Like the minotaur, he wore no shirt, just a burned leather apron over his baggy gray trousers, and a pair of smoked, unsophisticated goggles over half his face. He clipped a sheaf of papers to a small board with one of the bent wires, plucked one of the ratty quills out of the cup, and held them out. "I'm going to need you to fill out your order, and then you can have a seat over there –" he poked the quill at a pair of extremely uncomfortable-looking metal chairs, "while I check our schedule. We're booked solid for the next two months –"

"Great Thundera_,_ he's a tiger!" the twins shouted.

"A white tiger," Cheetara amended thoughtfully.

Tygra cast a quick look at her.

Ben's mouth shut with a click of teeth. He ripped the goggles from his head, revealing a pair of vivid blue eyes centered in a mask of robin's-egg blue. Aside from the mask, two black bands curving along his cheekbones, and the smears of soot, his face was pure white. He looked older than Lion-O. He was taller, too.

The white tiger blinked at the whole lot of them, and then he rolled his eyes.

"Aw, whiskers," he sighed. He scrubbed a hand through his mane, smoothing the long, sleek, white strands against his neck and behind his pointed ears. Black stripes made a chevron pattern on the top of his head, matched by the stripes down his lean, muscled arms. Under his breath, he said, "Mighta warned me, you dumb ox."

"Hello, Ben," Lion-O purred.

Felline glanced at him. She knew that purr. Lion-O was reacting to Ben much the way he reacted to his brother, and he was asserting himself as the dominant male in attendance.

"Actually, that's Ben-Gali to you," the other said. He flipped the clipboard onto his desk, where it landed with a clatter, and gave Lion-O a cheek-stretching grin. "Sorry you came all this way, but we have nothing to sell you."

"We don't want to buy anything except your services," Tygra said, moving to back up his brother.

Ben-Gali shrugged. "I told you. We're booked solid for the next two months."

"This is urgent," Lion-O said.

"Anyone who has the coin to spend can buy their level of urgency," Ben-Gali said. "We're booked up. Go somewhere else."

Felline couldn't believe her ears. By the startled hisses barely heard under the constant banging, the others felt the same. Who was this strange cat, and how had he ended up here, apparently alone, on the wrong end of nowhere? How had he escaped the devastation of the Tiger Clan? Why was he refusing to help them? He certainly didn't seem surprised to see them, as if he'd been expecting them to show up, and dreading it at the same time.

Lion-O, already pushed to breaking, snarled, "Maybe you haven't heard. I am Lion-O –"

"Lord of the ThunderCats," Ben-Gali finished for him. "Even way out here in Cow Town, we've heard of you. You haven't heard of me, though. Know why? I'm not a ThunderCat. Never was. Never will be."

"You're the only one who can help me!" Lion-O exploded. He yanked the wrapped Sword from the Gauntlet. Hands shaking, he placed it on the desk and undid the wrapping.

No matter how many times Felline saw it, she couldn't make it seem real. Like every other cat in the hot, dark office, she stared, hypnotized, at the pieces of the once-mighty Sword, dull and silent, the Eye of Thundera an opaque, unknowing red.

"Aw, what did you do to it?" Ben-Gali moaned in a kind of horrified agony. He picked up the largest piece by the hilt, the whole thing no bigger than the Sword's dagger form, and examined it inch by inch, both by feel and by sight. He seemed completely unaware of his audience.

"We need your help," Lion-O quietly said. "You're the only one who can fix it."

"I can't help you," Ben-Gali said, just as quietly, so that it took a second for his refusal to sink in. He slowly replaced the piece and re-did the wrapping.

"Can't, or won't?" Panthro rumbled, frowning.

Ben-Gali, unfazed by the big cat's size, gave Panthro a belligerent stare that he must have frequently turned on his boss. He passed a white hand over the sad bundle. "Can't. There's no way to fix this. You can't _fix_ the dead. Congratulations, Lion-O, Lord of the ThunderCats, I think you're the first animal in the history of Third Earth to break a cosmic alloy without using magic."

"Magic _was_ involved," Felline said, alarmed at how Lion-O swelled in fury.

Ben-Gali graced her with a dismissive sneer – and then he looked twice. His whole face lit up.

"Hel_lo,"_ he said. He elbowed his way between Tygra and WilyKit and grabbed one of Felline's hands. His grin hitched higher on one side, revealing the tip of an ultra-white fang. "What's your name, beautiful?"

Thoroughly taken aback, Felline leaned away from him, shoulders and tail as stiff as one of the statues in the yard. His wintry eyes bored into hers with such intensity that a blush rose into her cheeks, her embarrassment so strong that it prevented her from speaking.

"That's _Fluh-_uff-fee," WilyKat said in a chirpy, knowing singsong.

Aghast, Felline glared at him. He and his sister smirked at her, daring her to contradict him out loud, their big eyes half-lidded, their tails curling playfully. Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara, and Snarf gazed at her and Ben-Gali with their mouths open, apparently as stunned as she.

Lion-O looked ready to blow a fuse.

"Fluffy, huh? Cute." Ben-Gali bent closer and gazed up at her through his lashes.

Felline leaned farther back. His hold of her hand was the only thing keeping her from keeling over backward.

"We were told you could help us," Lion-O said loudly, as though volume alone could get him what he wanted. "There is a way to repair the Sword of Omens. The Hammer of Thundera."

"I don't have it," Ben-Gali said to Felline, his tiger charm turned on full blast. She eased her ears back in response.

Next to them, Lion-O's eyes almost bugged out of his head. "What do you mean, you don't have it?" he spluttered. "It must have been entrusted to you! You're the only cat within leagues of this place! How could you not have it?"

Nettled at last, Ben-Gali dropped Felline's hand. Panthro caught her before she fell.

"Look around you, Lion-O," Ben-Gali snapped. "This isn't your precious Thundera. I sold a useless artifact that my mother smuggled out of the caves her people died in, just like she smuggled me out, way back when I was a cub, to keep me alive."

His eyes flicked to Tygra as he spoke, but it wasn't a look of friendship. It was a calculating look. A question, afraid of its answer. Tygra's expression mirrored it. He opened his mouth, but Ben-Gali cut him off.

"She didn't know it, but she was sick just like them. She died not long after bringing me here. I had no money. I needed to eat. If you want that Sword fixed, I suggest you take it to the fires of Magmel and throw it in. Put the poor thing out of its misery, because _I can't help you."_

Just then, a hoarse voice called from the yard. "Ben! Ben, are you there? I need to speak with you!"

With a groan, Ben-Gali rolled his eyes so hard they almost didn't come back down.

"Yeah, I'll be right there!" he shouted. He scowled at the ThunderCats. "Look, this has been a fantastic waste of time, but I need to get to work. The door is that way. Good luck. Don't come back."

He stomped out of the office and vaulted the low railing. Felline watched him approach a stooped figure, swathed in a black cloak in spite of the heat, hooded so that she couldn't see his face. He hobbled up to Ben-Gali, who met him with his hands out as if ready to catch him should he fall.

"I found it," the cloaked figure rasped urgently. He sounded like a lizard. What would a lizard be doing here, swaddled like Mumm-Ra on a bad hair day? "It's time. We could finish this once and for all."

"Not now, old man, I'm on the clock," Ben-Gali hissed, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder. His eyes met Felline's. Fleetingly, regret touched his gaze, but then his expression hardened. He hooked an arm around his friend and steered him toward the rear of the building, voice too low for even Felline to make out over the hammering. They vanished around the corner.

"What was that?" Kat wondered. He hoisted himself onto his sister's shoulders, trying to see past the long building. Annoyed, Kit shook him off.

The older ThunderCats exchanged stunned glances. This hadn't gone at all as they'd expected.

"What do we do now?" Lion-O asked.

"Snyarf," Snarf answered sadly.

* * *

_**A/N2: **__I have been waiting to post this for FAR FAR too long! I'm not sure whether to be super excited or super scared! X3 Just . . . no tomatoes, okay? LOL._

_Reviewer Thanks! **KelseyAlicia**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Atea1793**, **Darwin**, **The Night Whisperer**, **St4r Hunter**, **Champion of Justice**, and **Hestia28** (Wahhh, I can't really respond without giving anything away! LOL! But - your review really made me smile!)._

_Guys, I'm tired. Mind and body. August was so busy and I keep forgetting it isn't August anymore. But, I'm happy, too. I love that you're taking this journey with me. *hugs everyone*_

_Yours,_

_Anne_


	10. Seeking the Hammer of Thundera, part 4

_**A/N1:** 5/20/20 So, in reality I hated the way the second half of this update came out (Brightheart's scene), especially the way it ended. Not my best writing. It's bothered me so much that I rewrote it._

* * *

"Where are we?" Pumyra demanded. She walked away from their now-silent zipcraft, her feet sinking in soft, sepia-colored mud. Rain pattered through leaves and into standing water that gleamed brownish-green. She wrinkled her nose. "What stinks?"

Slithe shot her a veiled look, dragging an empty canvas bag out of the cockpit. "Clarg patch," he said. "Sswampss."

Bag in one hand, ax in the other, he jumped to the ground, splashing into green water and black muck.

She put a fist on her hip. "I know _that,_ slug breath. I meant, what are we doing here?"

"Ssuppliess."

She was getting a little tired of his sullen, one-word answers. Was it her fault he was an incompetent slob? She crossed her arms. Tapped her foot impatiently. Tried to ignore how the mud splashed up her furred shin.

Uninterested in her opinion or her impatience, Slithe ambled away from her, following an invisible path between mossy pools, the rain streaming down his scales, his tail carving a trail through the muck.

"We have supplies, you fool," she called after him. "Hey! We're supposed to be in Oxborough, not the swamps." She gagged. "I think you stepped in the clargs already."

Slithe pointed with one long arm at what looked like a solid curtain of drooping branches and dripping leaves. "Oxborough iss that way. Not far. The minotaurss and the lizardss have been neighborss for a hundred yearss. We'll go there as ssoon as we pick up ssome bargaining material."

Pumyra blinked. Bargaining material? Whatever for? She'd assumed their plan would be the same one it always was: Barge in and demand the bull-men hand over the ThunderCats or she would destroy the town. Chances were good the minotaurs wouldn't, and she would, and she'd be on her way back to the _Black Pyramid_ with one redhead in chains and the War Stone in hand. Done and done.

Obviously, Slithe had different ideas.

Bristling, she hurried after him, the ground sucking at her feet, the sky drenching her hair, holding her tongue so that she could listen for an ambush.

After a few yards, in which the jungle closed mistily over the zipcraft, hiding it from sight, Slithe came to a stop. His thick tail swished through the reeds.

Pumyra pulled up short, loathe to run into his scaly hide. The clarg odor was strong enough to knock out a Thunderian mount at this range. "What?" she snapped.

"Shh," he said, laying a thick finger against his lips. His eyes glittered maliciously.

Though she would rather do anything than obey, all of her senses had clicked onto high alert. She crouched in the drizzle, ears pricked, eyes wide and searching.

Nothing. The swamp stretched out, blue and green and brown and gray. Quiescent, though secretive.

Suspecting a prank, Pumyra glared at Slithe, whose wedge-shaped mouth split into a grin.

"What –" she started again, but something small and sharp punched her in the back of the neck.

Pumyra fell her her knees and one hand in the mud, her other hand fumbling at the point of pain that spread numbness through her neck and jaw. Some kind of dart, hard and round as a seed, wet feathers at one end sticking to her fur. She couldn't force her now-useless fingers to pull it out. She raised trembling eyelids.

Slithe hadn't moved, grinning like a warty fiend. He chuckled as she struggled to speak.

He'd tricked her! That slimy, corpulent, traitorous _lizard!_

Wait until she got her hands around his fat neck!

Hands that were no longer under her control, unfortunately. The numbness snaked past her elbows, buckling them. She croaked like a toad.

Lizards slithered out of the mossy shadows, the dripping trees, and the placid water. Crude weapons made out of tree bark, vines, and leaves dangled from their twig-fingered hands. Needles, formed from fishbones, gleamed deadly white from the barrels.

Women. The word buzzed like an angry bee in Pumyra's brain, which was now as numb as the rest of her body. These lizards were female. Smaller than the soldiers Pumyra was used to, their faces flatter, snakelike, their eyes bigger, their frills longer and almost hairlike. Fans of mottled skin stretched between their upper arms and their shoulder blades.

She hadn't realized Slithe was bringing her, a cat, into the clandestine home of the lizards. A place that Claudus's armies had never been able to find in the swamps, back in the days of the Lizard Wars, when the cats had tried to eradicate their ancient enemies and failed. Where lizard women and their eggs had retreated into isolation and safety. The lingering threat of new generations was why Claudus had sent Grune and Panthro to find the Book of Omens in the first place, not that it had done him any good.

The women grouped themselves around their mutant kinsman, postures wary, gazes cold and distant, as Pumyra's eyelids slammed down and she toppled into rotting-vegetable darkness.

..::~*~::..

So close. Every time Felline thought they were about to find a solution, it danced away again, as elusive as a chib-chib in single moonlight.

She shaded her eyes. The sun rode low in the sky, setting fire to the snowfields on the Greater Barrier, the mountain range Ben-Gali had called the Hoarfrosts, lengthening the shadows in the market street. She stepped from the raised boardwalk into the next shop, whose door had been propped open in the hopes of enticing in a breeze. She'd been visiting each shop on the street in turn, hoping to hear something useful. If Ben-Gali no longer had the Hammer of Thundera, they should be able to pick up its trail, even if that trail was nearly twenty years old. So her reasoning went. No luck, so far. Cheetara and Tygra, shadowing her from across the street, had to be just as hot and discouraged as she was.

This shop, the bakery, appeared empty at first glance. Felline's impression was of wood – dark-hued, polished to a velvety sheen. The counters and shelves crowded close to each other, though her feet naturally found the quietest path over worn floorboards. Her eyes weren't given time to adjust to the dimness, however, because the tip-clop! of hooves on wood rapidly approached.

"Ben!" The name was an exclamation of pleasure. "I didn't expect you today!"

A younger minotaur in a frilly pink frock and matching bonnet rounded the corner from the back room. At the sight of her customer, she pulled up so short Felline thought someone must have yanked on her tufted tail. Her huge brown hands flew up to cover her muzzle. "Oh! I'm – I'm so sorry! I thought you were . . . someone else . . ."

She trailed off, her fuzzy ears flicking forward just as Felline heard a step behind her. Ben-Gali walked through the door. He wore a sleeveless shirt, sort of grayed and thinned out from too many washings, stretched across his lean but muscled torso. A cracked black leather belt cinched his baggy trousers around his narrow hips, rolled several times at the cuff. His black shoes, close-toed and hard-soled, bore scuff and burn marks. They clopped like hooves on the floorboards.

His closed eyes gave the impression that he'd walked through that door many times before.

"Brightheart!" he called, sounding exhausted, rubbing the back of his head. "Do you have any oatbuns left? Thickhide's in a foul mood because the old man slipped his leash again and I didn't finish restoring those plow blades of Stampede's and –"

He stopped. Everything stopped. Just for a few seconds.

Felline gave him a sheepish wave.

Ben-Gali outright frowned at her as though she were a froog in a flower bed, and then he turned his attention to the pink-frocked heifer. "Anyway, he says we can't close shop until we get the job done and I thought a few oatbuns would improve his disposition."

Brightheart giggled. She bustled around, wrapping large iced buns in waxed paper and nestling them in a paper bag. "The way you two fight, it's nothing but love. I don't know why either of you don't just admit that you're peas in a pod."

He rolled his eyes. "He's a _bull._ I'm a _cat."_

"Don't mean Thickhide regrets picking you and your sweet mother off the streets, Ben, and you nothing more than a hungry little kitten in her arms. Poor dear tried so hard to do right by you. So small, you were! And look at you now. You're the best thing that ever happened to this town and he'd be the first to say so."

Ben-Gali crossed his arms stubbornly. "Give it up, Bright-heart. You're imagining things."

"Am I?" She giggled again, and then fluttered her eyelashes at him. "How about I throw in some egg salad sandwiches, then. I made a fresh batch this afternoon, just for you."

_Really?_ _Even though you didn't expect him today? _Felline wondered, amused at Brightheart's transparency, but also pitying her for it. Not so long ago, before they were exiled from their homes, Felline might have done the same kind of thing, living each day in a holding pattern, just waiting, and hoping, that the one she loved would appear. That he would speak to her. That he would love her back.

"You are a darling, Brightness," Ben-Gali said with a grin. Then, reluctantly, he looked over his shoulder at Felline, who hadn't moved. "Er, would you mind selling me a few extra? You know. For a friend."

Brightheart snorted, but it wasn't a sound of hilarity. All of her down-home hospitality vanished as her large, long-lashed eyes crawled from Felline's hair to her toes and back up again. All she said, however, was, "Hmph!" as she stuck her muzzle in the air. She packed the sandwiches in a way that suggested their soft, eggy goodness had personally offended her.

"Her name is Fluffy," Ben-Gali said over Brightheart's flouncing. He grinned when Brightheart and Felline both glared at him.

"My friends are waiting for me," Felline said, broadcasting disapproval from every hair on her body. "You don't have to buy me dinner."

"Aw, come on," Ben-Gali said, turning on his charm the way some animals turned on a light. "I saw that tiger you were with, and his girlfriend. You're all spying on me, aren't you? It would be easier to do if I'm right in front of you."

"But not near so much fun."

"Ouch!" Ben-Gali pressed a hand to his chest. "You're a vicious one."

"And you're a liar," Felline said angrily.

"From the day I was born," he agreed with a cheerful, cheek-stretching grin.

Felline rolled her eyes, and thought she heard him cough on a chuckle. He took her arm, his long fingers meeting around her bicep, and gently steered her toward the open door. He tilted his head conspiratorially toward the street. "Trust me, your friendsaren't missing you right now, Fluffy."

"My name is Felline. Not Fluffy. Fah-_leen."_ Pulling her arm free, Felline pinned him with Stink Eye and held it until he raised his hands and backed obligingly away, and then she peered out. In an alley too small for a minotaur to squeeze into, half-hidden by some stacked boxes covered with a tarp and a rain barrel, Tygra and Cheetara wrapped their arms around each other, fire-orange and sun-yellow and ink-black, crimson and charcoal gray.

Felline sighed. So much for gathering intel. There could be a shootout right there in the street and neither the prince nor the cleric would notice, probably, since neither one had managed to espy one white tiger strolling along in plain sight. Obviously, they didn't think that tracking the Hammer was possible, and had therefore left the job up to her. Typical! Still, could she blame them? Privacy, even relative privacy, was a precious commodity these days.

She thought of the way Lion-O had acted earlier, when he, like them all, thought that he had found what they needed, and was then proven wrong immediately. His dark gloom had followed them all the way back to the _Feliner._ He'd shut himself up in his bunk, staring down at the Book of Omens as though hoping it would speak to him. Which it would, if he'd open it. Which he wouldn't.

Felline put a hand to her forehead. Why bother with all this? Cheetara and Tygra were right. The Hammer was gone. She should have just stayed there with Panthro. Maybe they could have made a head start on locating the last Power Stone. Though how they were supposed to keep it out of Mumm-Ra's hands without the Sword of Omens was a great big question mark.

Ben-Gali seemed content to watch Felline work through her spiraling thoughts, his eyes bright with interest.

"Welcome back," he teased when she resurfaced.

He was very handsome, she realized, unable to deny this fact with him standing so close to her that she could smell him. He was every bit as rugged as Tygra, with those thick brows and chiseled chin, but cooler than Lion-O, blue and white. As white as she was, his eyes sky blue. Steady eyes, and clear. Eyes she could fall into. Fall a very, very long way.

She shivered and broke the contact, both confused and exhilarated. She surreptitiously touched the locator clipped to her belt. Panthro and the kittens, holding down the fort in the _Feliner,_ would see if something happened to her. It would be fine, then, to go alone with this strangely charming tiger. Wouldn't it?

"Ben," Brightheart called, rolling the top of the bulging paper bag closed. Her bovine face was long with worry. "The sun is going down. They'll be here soon, and they can't catch you here. Not again. You've got to leave now, but be careful out there, you hear?"

"Aren't I always?" Ben-Gali accepted the bag, squeezed her bigger hand, stood on his toes, and kissed the air near her cheek. "Don't you worry. It'll take more than a lounge of lizards to pin me down."

Once more, Brightheart's gaze flicked in Felline's direction. Then it lowered. "Maybe that's why I _am_ worried," she mumbled.

Ben-Gali merely turned to Felline and gestured toward the street. When she hesitated, he abandoned the playful tiger routine and spoke seriously. "She's right, you know. We don't want to be here when the lizards show up. You picked a bad night to come to town."

Oh, he'd meant actual, real-life lizards. Lizards that came here, to Oxborough. Why? Had they followed the _Feliner?_ Was Mumm-Ra on to the ThunderCats and their mission here? No, he couldn't be. Pumyra couldn't spy for him anymore. Perhaps a reptile presence here was a completely unrelated occurrence. In which case, did they appear on a regular schedule? Nightly? Weekly? Monthly? _Why?_ Where did they come from? She should warn Cheetara –

"Your face is fascinating," Ben-Gali said, snapping her into the Here and Now. "I can practically hear you thinking."

Too confused – _Flattered? Maybe?_ her brain suggested, but she punched it back down – to reply, Felline regally preceded Ben-Gali outside. Cheetara and Tygra were nowhere to be seen. She deflated, looking up and down the boardwalks without hope. The shadows stretched longer than before, violet in the flaming sunset.

"Where do you think –" she began, discouraged, but Ben-Gali lightly touched her arm.

"Come on, I know a good place to stay out of sight and talk," he said.

"You want to talk?" She raised skeptical eyebrows.

He rolled his eyes and propped the bakery bag on his shoulder. "Sure. You think other cats pass through here often? I can't help it. I'm curious. Admit it, you are too. That's why you came looking for me all by your lonesome."

"I wasn't alone," she said, but maybe he was right. She was curious. Who wouldn't be? Felline debated with herself for two more seconds, and then she squared her shoulders. Once more, she touched her locator. Cheetara had hers. Panthro was on the watch. They would be all right. "Fine. Let's go, then."

Ben-Gali made a _What, really?_ face that instantly disarmed Felline. He flashed another, sweeter smile and then led the way off the boardwalk.

Mournfully, Brightheart watched them go from the bakery door.

* * *

_**A/N2: **__Many, many thanks to **allurascastle** \- without her help, I would not have been able to smash this update into shape. I hope I did a little better this time around. Your suggestions were wonderful! :3 So, we're slowly moving forward. I'm still not giving up until this story is finished! *determined face*_

_Reviewer Thanks! **rosewhip889**, **Darwin**, **KelseyAlicia**, **Lionessa**, **Atea1793**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Billamon**, **Blacktiger93**, **Champion of Justice**, **Hestia28** (heeheehee, I am having so much fun reading everyone's reactions to my Ben-Gali - if nothing else, he's entertaining! *hugs back* Thank you so much!), **The Night Whisperer**, **St4r Hunter**, **FallingStar5027** (three times! Woohoo!), **Seeds of Destruction**, **AndrianaWarrior7**, and **allurascastle**. YOU GUYS. Sixteen reviews on that last update! A personal best! Even though it's not up to me. LOL. I love you all so muuuuuch!_

_This is neither here nor there, but both Exiles and Rebels are now available on Amazon. Check them out! 'Cause they're pretty. Also, I have a Discord. If you wanna join to chat about my works with me or with other readers, PM for an invite._

_Until next time,_

_Anne_


	11. Seeking the Hammer of Thundera, part 5

On the outskirts of town, the setting sun sent a long orange reflection across the dirt road, unbroken by tree or shrub, which burned Kask's webbed feet with each step he took.

_Their squad slithered through the briarwood, tracking the ThunderCats and the herd of tiny plant-people the cats had befriended. The air trapped inside the briar's dome got stuck in Kask's sinuses, stuffy and dry, and the whitened thorns of the overgrown weeds nipped at his ankles, as sharp as fangs._

_Then came the pollen, thrown by the flower-creatures in glittering golden comets. It stung his eyes, and then invaded his scales and stung there, too. He lost sight of the men in his squad as he staggered around in agony, but he could still hear the fighting._

_From the sounds, he realized that the wrong side was winning._

_And through his stumbling feet, that the ground, the air, and the thorns were all growing extremely hot._

"Kask, I swear, I'm going to shoot you just to get you to stop twitching." Kask's partner made the sniff-hiss that signaled annoyance. "I don't know why I always get stuck with you. You make my scales itch."

Kask curled his toes. Crispy, coated in dust. "I can't help it, Steggs. There's something wrong tonight. I can feel it."

_The briarwood burst into flames. A circle of death, trapping the lizards with their ancient enemy. Incapacitated, choking on the smoke._

_The cats attacked._

"Sure. You're the survivor, right? Gotta give you prophetic powers or something, right?" Steggs sniff-hissed again. "You said there was something wrong last week, too. And the week before that. And the one before."

That's because there _was_ something wrong. There was _always_ something wrong. Like that uppity heifer in the bakery claiming she'd no egg sandwiches to sell. Or that black monster threatening to smash their skulls with his big iron hammer if they strayed off the main street again. Or that _cat,_ that arrogant white tiger, that the bull-men wouldn't let them kill in spite of _clearly_ being provoked. But this particular evening . . .

"I smell cat," he said. Spicier than the bovines, predatory like lizards, faint but apparent on the hot, still air. More cats. Lots of cats. Just like in the briar. He shuddered.

"Stop twitching!" Steggs brought his patched-together rifle up, pointing it at Kask's temple. He pinched his lipless mouth closed, tightening his finger on the trigger. Apparently, he wasn't kidding this time. "You smell the overgrown cub. The pet, or whatever it is. You know that. Let's just get this over with."

Kask side-eyed the rifle and chose not to reply. They weren't military anymore, he and Steggs and a few others. They'd come home, lugging what technology they'd managed to steal from the edges of battlefields in the middle of the night, deserters all, though there weren't many of them. Mumm-Ra's hold on the the lizards was too strong, but the women and the hatchlings were counting on the disgraced few to bring back the supplies they couldn't make for themselves out in the swamps.

Steggs hadn't been in the thick of the fighting. He'd seen an opportunity, and he'd taken it. He didn't care a whit about deserting the way Kask did.

And those who hadn't deserted? Dying by the dozen, or so they'd heard. Like Khamai and Sauro and the rest of Kask's squad. By going up against the same handful of ThunderCats again and again.

Crickets chirped in the silence between the two lizards. Gnats whizzed through the cooling air in gauzy clouds, getting up their nostrils, in their eyes. Kask tried not to twitch as they walked. His empty pack kept slipping off his shoulder. He hated the prairie. Especially in the summer. It reminded him too much of that night.

The night he'd lost his claw-mates. The night General Slithe had betrayed them, his so-called prized specialized unit. Khamai, the brilliant chameleon who had tracked the ThunderCats to the briarwood. Sauro, loyal to a fault, built like a sycorax, an unstoppable force in battle. And Kask, a rare amphibious lizard, who could break down an enemy's defense from the water while they were focused on Sauro and Khamai. Three supersoldiers at Mumm-Ra's beck and call, the best scouts of the lizard army – but Slithe had betrayed them. Whether under Mumm-Ra's orders or not, Kask didn't want to know. The fact remained that the lizards – his kinsmen! – had wielded the flamethrowers that had burned down the briar in an effort to eliminate the ThunderCats. The uncontrolled flames had taken his comrades. Kask, on Khamai's orders, had taken to the river and swum to safety.

Rather than returning to his commanding officer, he had kept swimming, all the way back home to the swamps.

He would never stop hearing the screams of his comrades as they burned to death, sacrificing themselves for a cause that he no longer believed in. He would never stop expecting to see the raging flames coming for him, where no river promised safe haven.

_"Stop twitching!"_ Steggs yelled.

They'd reached the main street. Steggs made a motion as though he intended to slap Kask with the rifle before shooting him, but a roughly lizard-sized shadow detached itself from the twilight and swallowed him.

Kask froze, staring at the spot where Steggs had just been standing. Then his training kicked in. With a vicious hiss, he whipped around, claws reaching for an attacker, tail curling to deliver a deathblow.

The cheetah dodged his grasp so fast he didn't see it happen. His claws closed on hot air. His tail thumped onto the ground. The ThunderCat stood taller than he did, all straight-legged and hairy. Her narrow, tilted eyes did not improve her pale face.

Worse, he recognized her. She was the one who had knocked him unconscious, leaving his body where the licking flames could reach it, whether she'd intended it or not.

She propped her fist on her hip. She smiled. "Hi," she said.

Kask had time for a disappointed thought: _See, Steggs? I was right._

Then an orange, black-striped arm swung out of nowhere. It looped around his throat and tightened, its rock-hard muscles bulging under his jaw. He gagged, trying not to bite through his own tongue. His captor lifted him clear off his webbed feet, standing in a way that incapacitated his tail. The cheetah wisely stayed out of reach of his toe-claws.

The second ThunderCat pushed his weird furred face into Kask's line of sight. He grinned. Kask's gut sank. This was the cat who had responded to Sauro's strength with strength, and won.

Maybe Kask was prophetic, after all.

"You've got some explaining to do, lizard," the orange tiger said.

..::~*~::..

Felline watched from the velvet rope as Ben-Gali removed the individually-wrapped oatbuns from the bag and left them on the filthy desk in the office of The Iron Oxen. The sounds of roaring fire, hissing water, and banging hammer from one of the more distant stalls continued without cessation.

"I thought you had to work," she said.

"Thickhide'll live," he replied, but then he let out a rather rueful chuckle as he deposited the last oatbun on the pile. "I might not, though. Let's get out of here before he catches wind of us."

He led the way around the back of the shop and onto a well-worn trail through waist-high grass. With only one moon in the sky – the smallest, pearl-like Panthera – the night darkened quickly around them, drawing close like a cloak. Felline tripped.

"Here." Ben-Gali transferred the bag to his right hand and held out his left to her.

After a slight hesitation, Felline took his hand. It didn't feel natural at all. She could tell he didn't think so, either, but all he said was, "It's not much farther."

Clusters of fireflies burst from the grass as the two cats passed through, winking blue, green, and yellow. It was a beautiful night, the kind that used to call her to her window to moongaze back in Foret, warm and still and full of the smell of flowers, and soil, and . . . a river?

She swiveled her ears. Yes, or maybe a creek, burbling not far in the distance. Heavy shoes scraping through gravel, Ben-Gali angled away from the water. He led her to a copse, black in the moonlight. He dropped her hand and shuffled around in the dark for a moment, mystifying Felline until he clamped the bag between his teeth, reached up with lean arms, and began to climb the tallest tree. He'd taken off his shoes.

He turned to help her, but she was already there. They shared a grin.

"Hungry?"

"Yes, please."

Ben-Gali fished around in the crackling bag and then passed over two sandwiches. He settled back against the tree trunk, one leg propped on the branch and the other dangling, and took a surprisingly dainty bite of a third sandwich.

Felline stuffed half of one of hers in her mouth.

He snorted into his eggs. "Good?"

"D'lishish," she said, happily chewing. She swallowed. "Brightheart makes these for you?"

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Me . . . and the lizards."

She took another bite, halving the half. "And the lizards come here – ?"

He looked at her quickly, as if that wasn't the topic he'd expected her to start with, and then relaxed into a smile tinged with belligerence. The same one he'd worn when they'd met that afternoon. "Yeah, they come here. Once a week. They barter for food and other supplies and then they leave. Why? Going to tell your king so you can kill them, too?"

_Interesting,_ she thought. Ben-Gali definitely wasn't like any other cat she knew, although that healthy dose of tiger pride couldn't be mistaken for anything else. "I'll probably mention it, yeah. But Lion-O doesn't want to kill lizards." _Didn't._ With her second sandwich, she tried to smother the twinge of doubt that cropped up when she realized that Lion-O hadn't said anything about lizards in a while. After clashing with Pumyra during the bloody battle to control Avista City, Felline wasn't sure what Lion-O thought of the lizards anymore. "He wants to stop Mumm-Ra. If these lizards come here to barter, chances are good they aren't part of Mumm-Ra's army. We have no quarrel with them. Not anymore."

"Huh," Ben-Gali said. A noncommittal grunt. The Leo moon bloomed over the horizon, as deliberately and stately as a flower unfolding its petals, its purple and blue stripes swirling around the pair of ever-present, eye-shaped storms. Ben-Gali pulled a twig off the tree and chucked it at the ground. "I thought ThunderCats hated lizards. Their 'ancient enemy' or whatever."

"Lion-O's different," she told him. She pulled her knees in and spoke into them. "A lot has happened."

"I suppose getting exiled from your home has something to do with that," he said bitterly. He turned his gaze outward, toward the quiet burbling of the creek, his profile carved from ice in the brightening moonlight.

"Maybe." She liked the way he could look at something so intently, without moving a muscle except to breathe, slow and even. He strongly reminded her of Tygra in that moment, because Lion-O, his brain clicking through a thousand thoughts a minute, could never sit still. "Is that how you feel? Why you say you aren't a ThunderCat? Because you and your mother were exiled from your home, too?"

He laughed and sat forward. "You ask some personal questions, you know that?"

"I only ask what I want to be told," she said. "It's easier to talk to you than I expected."

"Lucky me!" he said, and they both laughed.

When they quieted down, though, Felline tensed, swiveling her ears.

"Someone's coming!" she hissed.

Ben-Gali straightened. He didn't ask her to clarify. He didn't ask for proof. He dropped out of the tree and landed on all fours, silent in the dirt around the roots, staring hard into the firefly-speckled darkness.

Felline was sure he could hear it, too, in spite of his smaller ears. A crashing through the grass. A wheeze, a tremendous sniff, and a cough.

And then a voice, raspy like a lizard's. "Ben! I know you're there."

Ben-Gali made a face, looking like he was suppressing a groan with his entire being. He stood and glanced up at Felline. He pressed a finger to his lips. When she nodded, he said, "Yeah, I'm here, old man. What are you doing out this late?"

"I'm not here for you, Ben."

Ben-Gali _pff_ed dismissively. "Of course you are. I'm awesome."

The hooded figure from that afternoon stepped into the moonlight encircling the tree. He lifted his pale hands, grasped the hood, and folded it back.

A shock went through Felline, tingling in her palms and the soles of her feet. He wasn't a lizard – he was a cat! Another survivor!

But how? Why? What was it about this peaceful little town in the middle of nowhere that had funneled them here, now, seeking the one thing that could save them all?

The cat lifted his head, his nostrils flaring and white mustache fluttering as he noisily inhaled. The bridge of his nose was both wide and angled sharply, as though it had been broken at least once. The tails of a sweat-stained bandanna lifted in the light breeze that ruffled his white mane. His tufted ears, though positioned lower and on the sides of his head, were larger and more feline than not. Two gray eyes stared upward, filmed over like Panthro's bad eye. They drifted, sightless.

The ruddy-bearded cat nodded toward the tree. "I can smell you there, young one. I want you to take me to your king."

* * *

_**A/N: **It occurred to me that this chapter felt like it was dragging - because it was! It's pretty long, word-wise. I think this is a good place to stop it and move on to the next chapter . . . which brings the total planned chapter count up to 12. I think. Still have a way to go!_

_Oh, and just FYI, I changed the Brightheart scene last chapter very subtly - to make it better, of course! Go check it out if you're curious. :3_

_Reviewer Thanks! **allurascastle** (twice!), **KelseyAlicia**, **Atea1793**, **St4r Hunter**, **The Night Whisperer**, **Darwin**, **AndrianaWarrior7**, **Heart of the Demons**, **Seeds of Destruction**, **Blacktiger93**, and **FallingStar5027**. I love you guys so much! Bear with me, okay? Writing this is kinda rocky for me right now (like, I don't know if I want to make the next chapter a "Part II" or give it its own focus, and other concerns). But I'll figure it out, especially with all of you cheering me on! THANK YOU!_

_Forever Yours,_

_Anne_


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